They were Georges Guelzec, the 69-year-old President of the European Gymnastics Federation, and Morinari Watanabe. 

"I do not support one or the other candidate because they are two very different profiles," Grandi told insidethegames on the eve of the election. "One [Guelzec] is a technician like me, who was, like me, a gymnast of his national team. He is a good and pleasant man.

"The other is a technician, but also a businessman. He is fond of rhythmic gymnastics in a good way and he was instrumental in the great Japanese success in our sport over recent years.

"I don't have a crystal ball to see into the future. 

"I hope the new President will follow the vision I defended that sport without justice is not sport.

"For the rest, he can do what he wants."

It was to be Watanabe, the younger contender - with 100 of the 119 votes. That spoke volumes.

Once ensconced, the 57-year-old President of the Japan Gymnastics Association certainly set about doing what he wants - that is, what he believes FIG ought to want.

On January 5 this year, in a message to FIG members, Watanabe revealed that a proposal would be put forward to the membership of the governing body to create a new "community" within the sport.

He added that the organisation was hoping this community would be ready to launch "from the moment the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games reach an end".

The plan would be considered by the Council and then put forward to the FIG Congress, due to be held in Baku, where a decision on its implementation could be made.

That two-day Congress begins today. And the community to which Watanabe referred - involving a practice that some regard as sport but others regard as akin to a philosophy, namely parkour - remains at best deeply divided over the direction in which he is seeking to take it. Or to include it.

Parkour derives from the phrase "parcours du combatant" and has been developed from techniques imparted to military personnel in order to help them get from one point to another in difficult terrain without using equipment.

"Parkour involves seeing one's environment in a new way, and imagining the potential for navigating it by movement around, across, through, over and under its features," reads a working definition.

The practice was developed in France, primarily by Raymond Belle, and then by his son David and his group of friends, the self-styled Yamakasi, during the late 1980s.

The discipline was popularised in the late 1990s and 2000s through films, documentaries and advertisements featuring the Yamakasi.

In spring 2017 this urban sport was brought "under the aegis" of the FIG, which organised the first World Cup events in parkour which took place earlier this year in Hiroshima, Japan and Montpellier, France.

David Belle was the first President of FIG's Parkour Commission, established last year.

Plans were announced for both cities to host events again next year, from April 19 to 21 and May 30 to June 1 respectively. It has also been announced that another World Cup competition will be held in Chengdu in China on April 6 and 7.

National Federations interested in hosting the first-ever Parkour World Championships, scheduled to take place between May and July 2020, have been invited to come forward.

First introductory courses, aimed at making National Federations familiar with parkour, are due to be held in Baku this week, and in Qatar's capital Doha on December 17 and 18.

"The interest shown so far in these courses by National Federations has been remarkable and further opportunities will be offered in 2019," a FIG statement read.

"In addition, plans are underway to stage a number of judges' courses and coaches' academies next year."

Two vistas of parkour lie ahead. One, remaining true to the original vision, shuns "competition" and celebrates private flourishes in an urban landscape. 

The other will be tailor-made to become part of a new wave of urban sporting activity that engages with the youth - ticking one of the International Olympic Committee's most cherished boxes - and can look ahead to becoming a part of the shiny new Olympic Games, complete with logos and television coverage.

Parkour looks likely to follow the same route as other "young" sports such as snowboarding and BMX riding, both of which have become features - and attractive features at that - of the Olympics, but are managed by the international bodies for skiing and cycling respectively.

A Parkour Sports Initiation was conducted in October during the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.

Activities attracted hundreds of young people every day to the highly-popular Urban Park, which hosted a range of innovative official sports and disciplines such as basketball 3x3, BMX, breaking and sport climbing.

In a release issued earlier this week, FIG referred to the "big decision" that the Congress must take concerning this potential new branch of its operation.

"For Parkour to be officially recognised as an FIG discipline, the General Assembly must approve the necessary changes to the Federation's statutes, as it previously did with trampoline and acrobatic gymnastics, the last disciplines welcomed into the FIG fold 20 years ago."

Of course, the Games must evolve. We've come a long way from tug of war and jeu de paume. But those within the parkour community feel their sacred flame has been spirited away to sustain the Olympic cauldron.

In October, FIG's foray into parkour was plunged into crisis after more than half of its Parkour Commission, established last year to oversee the integration of the discipline, resigned in protest at the way its implementation has been handled.

An open letter, signed by Ahmed Al-Breihi, Aleksandra Shevchenko, Estelle Piget and Kamil Tobiasz, accused FIG of ignoring the views of the parkour communities when conducting their venture into the sport and of "very little or no transparency" at how it has been implemented.

"Our parkour values are in incompatibility with this new project that will not preserve the essence of our parkour community," the four officials added.

Al-Breihi and Piget were on the group as ordinary members, while Shevchenko and Tobiasz served as athletes' representatives.

Belle was already out of the picture. When he posted a photo on his Facebook page from the Montpellier World Cup event, many of his followers accused him of selling-out.

He subsequently "stepped back due to other professional commitments", according to the FIG, to be replaced as President by another long-time French associate of parkour, Charles Perrière.

So the mass resignation left just three members on the Commission - Perrière, Michel Boutard and new addition Kazuyoshi Hariya.

Asked about the situation earlier this week, Watanabe remained upbeat, telling insidethegames: "The FIG still has excellent connections with the parkour community. Two new members have already been nominated and others will follow shortly."

Soon afterwards it was announced that Argentina's Micaela Buono Pugh had joined as the new athletes' representative, replacing Shevchenko and Tobiasz.

In this position, Buono Pugh will also act as a member of the FIG Athletes' Commission.

The Commission will also be supported by a new parkour sports manager, Jakub Koslacz, who took up his position with the FIG at the end of October. Additional members are due to be nominated shortly.

So FIG has once again got its ducks back in a line. But the parkour community is still taking pot-shots at them.

Much of the reaction to FIG's efforts has been channelled through a recently constituted manifestation of parkour's grassroots, namely Parkour Earth, which was set-up to resist the Federation's initiative.

Parkour Earth's chief executive Eugene Minogue points out that the discipline has "no connection to nor lineage from gymnastics" and notes with regret that the IOC has previously allowed older, established sports bodies to take over new events.

The traceurs, as original protagonists of parkour have become known, are deeply offended at Watanabe's "land grab". "We Are Not Gymnastics" has become a popular rallying slogan across social media.

In the run-up to the Congress, parkour communities from all over the world, including Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, Poland and Britain, have written open letters to their respective gymnastics bodies which implore them to "vote no to including parkour as a new gymnastics discipline".

Part of the letter from the New Zealand parkour community to Gymanstics NZ reads: "It is our understanding that for parkour to be officially recognised as an FIG discipline the General Assembly must ratify the necessary changes to the Federation's statutes at the FIG Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan.

"The FIG must pass this vote in order to retrospectively justify their deeds, that have to date been outside the bounds of its governance, authority, and the scope of its statutes.

"It is of deep concern to Parkour NZ and the New Zealand parkour community, and should be of deep concern to Gymnastics NZ and the New Zealand gymnastics community, that all of the FIG's efforts to appropriate parkour have been both unilateral and conducted ultra vires."

The letter concludes by urging NZ Gymnastics either to vote no or abstain from the vote concerning adopting parkour as a FIG discipline.

The announcement about "community" came as part of Watanabe's "innovation" vision for 2018.

But he also stressed the need for the organisation to innovate in areas such as ethics, competition formats and education in 2018.

"We must keep on developing gymnastics so that the sport retains its luster in the eyes of the next generation too," Watanabe wrote.

"To achieve this, there is something we must keep in mind.

"We must know that there is no success in the future by simply extending the past.

"The evolution of technology has drastically changed people's ways of thinking, their values and their behaviour.

"If we just keep following the precedent of successful experiences from the past, we will not be able to achieve success in the future.

"We need innovation."

Nobody could accuse Watanabe of failing to match actions to words.

On November 20, FIG and Fujitsu Limited announced that a new judging support system will be tested at an upcoming World Cup event and, if successful, implemented at the 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart.

FIG and Fujitsu, a leading Japanese technology company, began collaborating in 2017 to create a judging support system that is "fair and accurate".

Data was collected at the 2017 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Montreal, Canada to assist with this.

It will now be tested at a yet-to-be determined World Cup event, with the new system supplementing the visual observations of judges by capturing the gymnasts' movements with 3D laser sensors, while providing numerical data.

If successful, the system will feature at the FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in German city Stuttgart next year. Judging has long been a contentious issue in the sport and controversy at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games prompted Grandi to oversee a scrapping of the "perfect 10" score.

American Paul Hamm won the gold medal in the men's all-around competition at the Games but only after South Korean bronze-medalist Yang Tae-young was incorrectly given a start value of 9.9 instead of 10.0 by judges in the parallel bars portion of the final.

The 0.1-point discrepancy was enough to drop Yang from gold to bronze and three judges were suspended as a result of the error.

Since then, however, many in the sport have said that the new system is far too complicated for the general public, and often even aficionados, to readily understand.

Two years ago Grandi said that the incipient Fujitsu project represented "a great chance for gymnastics", but added: "It only deals with the difficulty score, not with the execution score. This 3D system would enable to get fixed difficulty scores, and therefore to prevent from any possible misadventuring. It is a great idea but for now it is just a dream."

Now Grandi's "businessman" has made it happen.

"It is a big step forward and it is indeed as exciting as it sounds," Watanabe told insidethegames. 

"The vision of former FIG President Bruno Grandi to have both the execution and difficulty scores given through a computer programme will become a reality soon. The Judges' Support System will already be implemented in the course of next year."

That huge step looks likely to be followed by another, as Congress is also being asked to rubber-stamp the creation of a Gymnastics Ethics Foundation.

In a release issued on the eve of the Congress, FIG said: "In the wake of the abuse cases in the United States which so shocked the world of gymnastics, the FIG, under the leadership of its President, undertook an in-depth review of its policies and rules and acted to reinforce its judicial tools in order to better prevent any new cases and to help the victims.

"It was with this goal that the concept of a Foundation was developed - independent from the FIG in its functioning and tasked with dealing with all forms of harassment, abuse and violations of the ethical principles."

Watanabe told insidethegames: "This is a very important project. Together with our decision to employ a full-time safeguarding manager within the FIG, this will help the implementation of the FIG's safeguarding policies and procedures for the protection of participants in gymnastics against all kinds of harassment and abuse."

Watanabe appears buoyed by an irrepressible optimism. If challenges exist - dare one say, in parkour-like fashion - he either circumvents or vaults them.

For instance. It was put to him that the International Swimming Federation have recently blocked a new event proposed by the International Swimming League which they say is unauthorised. A similar situation occurred last year when the International Skating Union (ISU) threatened to penalise athletes competing in unauthorised competitions.

The ISU then had to amend its rules after the case was taken to the European Union and found to be in breach of its anti-trust laws.

IOC President Thomas Bach recently said commercial models of sport posed "a serious threat" to International Federations.

Could Watanabe rule out similar commercial rivals to FIG emerging, and if so what would be his view of the situation?

"The FIG has luckily not encountered such problems in the past and they don't seem to be emerging in the near future," he responded. Simple. 

During this time of dynamic corporate change, Watanabe has also followed his own pathway to some higher corridors of power. On October 20, he was asked by President Yoshirō Mori to become a member of the Tokyo 2020 Executive Board.

Watanabe had been meeting the President to convey the news that he had just been elected as a member of the IOC.

Upon that election, Watanabe said: "So far, my responsibility has just been for the FIG but now I must help oversee the whole sports movement.

"It is a heavy responsibility but I must do it."

Asked why he felt the need to take on all that extra heavy responsibility, Watanabe told insidethegames: "I believe that gymnastics and I as FIG President have the responsibility to contribute to the development of the worldwide sports movement and to further the spirit of Olympism."

His appointment as a Tokyo 2020 Board member prompted him to say that he hopes to serve as a bridge between the IOC, the FIG and the Games.

"As a Japanese sports leader I do not only know the needs of sports, but being born in Japan I fully understand my compatriots' culture," he told insidethegames.

The FIG has announced that "virtually every one" of its National Federations will be present in Baku for this "vital gathering".

A release added: "Each of the affiliated Federations has received the opportunity to send at least one delegate to the Azerbaijani capital, thanks to the FIG's exceptional offer of providing one flight ticket and hotel room per Federation.

"It is a welcome opportunity for those Federations with smaller resources to have their voices heard."

Watanabe is far from the first, and will be far from the last, President of an International Federation to appreciate the advantages of offering smaller nations to add their voices - after all, one vote is equal to another.

It is all carefully calculated to enable Watanabe's favourite word.

"Innovation is a must for all sports," he said. "If we want to develop our sport we have to be attractive for the public and the media and we must make our various disciplines interesting for the youth and respect their needs."

Spoken like a true IOC member. But if anyone can make all the changes stick, this is surely the man. 

Even if there will always be members of the parkour community who will continue to stick it to the man…