Decorated Olympics swimmer Kirsty Coventry has emerged the first female president of the International Olympic Committee. She is also the first African to be elected to handle the biggest job in world sports.
Coventry who is Zimbabwean sports minister beat World Athletics Seb Coe who has been eyeing the job, skiing’s Johan Eliasch, cycling’s David Lappartient, and gymnastics’ Morinari Watanabe to earn an eight-year term that will lapse in 2033. She was the outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach’s backed candidate for the job.
It was the most open and hard-to-call IOC presidential election in decades with no clear front-runner before the vote. Many predicted an absolute majority could take several rounds of votes to secure.
“I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision you have taken,” Coventry said in her acceptance speech. “Now we have got some work together.”
The 41-year-old Coventry who won two gold medals will take over the reins of office on June 23, as the as the 10th IOC president in its 131-year history.
Coventry who was born in Harare in 1983 won three Olympic medals: a gold, a silver, and a bronze. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing she won four medals: a gold and three silver.
