KIRSTY Coventry will become the IOC’s first female president after a surprise landslide election win in which Sebastian Coe was a distant third. Athletics chief Coe earned just eight of 97 available votes despite endorsements from track and field’s great and good in recent days.
Instead what was billed as a tense and secretive battle to succeed Thomas Bach became a romp as Coventry, 41, won the required 49 votes in the opening round. Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, the pre-race favourite, finished second with 28 votes in a secret ballot held at a luxury resort in Costa Navarino, Greece.
Zimbabwe’s Coventry, a six-time Olympic medalist in swimming who competed at five different Games, has promised to empower athletes and provide clarity around transgender regulations once her eight-year stint begins in June.
She faces the daunting prospect of working with Donald Trump ahead of the Los Angeles Games in 2028 but said her margin of victory can be taken as a sign that the IOC is a united force.
“We have to work together,” she said. “We might not always agree but we have to be able to come together for the betterment of the organisation.”
For Coe, meanwhile, the defeat is a significant blow. He may have been publicly backed by Mo Farah, Usain Bolt and Manchester United in recent days but that mattered little among IOC members.
Insiders suggest that many longer-serving delegates were unhappy with Coe’s decision to pay gold medalists in athletics at last summer’s Paris Games because it was a departure from the Olympic spirit of amateurism.
Coe struck a magnanimous tone afterwards, saying: “On behalf of World Athletics, we wish to congratulate Kirsty on her election as future president of the International Olympic Committee.
“As president of the No1 Olympic sport, we look forward to working closely with Kirsty to ensure that sport remains the priority of the IOC, and athletes the driving force behind the new president’s agenda.”
Coventry’s ascension to the biggest job in sport goes against the Committee’s 131-year history – all nine predecessors were greying men, eight of them European and the other American.
“It’s a really powerful signal,” she said of becoming both the first woman and African to be elected. “It’s a signal that we’re truly global, and that we have evolved into an organisation that is truly open to diversity. And we’re going to continue walking that road in the next eight years.”
British Olympic chief Andy Anson said: “We know her well and look forward to working together to grow the Olympic Movement’s global relevance and commercial success.”
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