Kirsty Coventry’s rise to the pinnacle of world sport was complete in a matter of minutes. She required just one, short round of voting in Thursday’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidential election to command a majority, winning 49 of the 97 available votes.
With that, the 41-year-old has become the single most powerful figure in sport, but despite her status as one of three front-runners in the race, she has still managed to fly under the radar.
Since her election to the IOC’s Athletes Commission in 2013 she has risen through the ranks, becoming chair of the Commission in 2018 and was made a member of the IOC two years ago. She earned her stripes before making her pitch to be president and has also cultivated powerful friends – including, most significantly, outgoing president Thomas Bach, who is believed to have lobbied heavily for her in the closing days of the race.
Africa’s most decorated Olympian, Harare-born Coventry enjoyed a glittering career as a swimmer before transitioning into politics, making her a rare former athlete – alongside Coe – in this year’s presidential hopefuls. She won seven medals – including gold in the 200m backstroke at the 2004 Games in Athens and in Beijing in 2008 – across her Olympic career. She retired after her fifth Olympics, in Rio, having (at the time) won the joint-most individual women’s swimming medals in the history of the Games.
Her success made her a national treasure in Zimbabwe, but that status has also proved something of a thorn in her side in the run-up to this election. Robert Mugabe called her a “golden girl” and personally handed her $100,000 in cash on state television after her triumph in Beijing, at a time of widespread suffering and hunger in Zimbabwe. Another authoritarian figure, current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, appointed her minister for youth, sports, art, and recreation in 2019.
The Zimbabwean regime is under both UK and US sanctions “aimed at encouraging the Government of Zimbabwe to respect democratic principles and institutions and the rule of law”. Human Rights Watch considers Mnangagwa’s reelection in 2023 to have “failed to meet” criteria for free and fair elections, while dissidents and opposition figures are reported to have been arbitrarily detained and tortured, and the justice system misappropriated against human rights activists.
Qualms over the regime she works for did not appear to have affected her IOC campaign, as she swept the floor with her fellow members. That popularity and the resounding majority of her win stands her in good stead, with her closest challenger – Juan Antonio Samaranch – receiving only 28 votes ito her 49, and none of the remaining five contenders winning more than eight.
Coventry’s political nous has been honed during her rise to Mnangagwa’s government and her expertly-navigated transition from IOC commission member in 2013 to Bach’s chosen successor and mentee little over a decade later. That nous will come in handy with a volatile Donald Trump looming large over the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and the challenges of dealing with Putin’s Russia and the Middle East on the horizon.
Asked a question about Trump in her post-victory press conference, she showed a hint of steel, saying, “I have been dealing with, let’s say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old. What I have learned is that communication will be key.”
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Issues of gender eligibility – a favourite topic of Trump’s – are likely to be at the fore of Coventry’s in-tray as president, and she has pledged to bring in a blanket ban on transgender athletes competing in the women’s category at the Olympics. But she may face scrutiny over the IOC’s handling of the gender row that erupted during the boxing competition at the Paris Olympics, when she was chair of the Athletes’ Commission, and how she handles a complex and polarising issue will be closely watched.
While diplomacy may not be an issue, what may prove slightly thornier for the new president is her track record as sports minister. Her tenure has been marked by accusations of inaction and ineffectiveness, with Zimbabwe’s sports infrastructure found wanting on multiple occasions. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) imposed a ban on the country hosting national football games in 2020 due to unsafe stadiums, which still have not been fixed, and Fifa imposed a ban on Zimbabwe from international fixtures over accusations of government interference in 2022.
But Coventry’s relative youth and her status as the sole female and sole African candidate – and groundbreaking achievement as first female president – may be what the IOC feels it needs to project a more progressive, diverse image in an increasingly polarised world. There were no female members of the IOC until 1981 and Coventry is only the second woman to run for the presidency.
“I hope that this vote will be an inspiration to many people,” she said in her victory speech. “Glass ceilings have been shattered today, and I am fully aware of my responsibilities as a role model.”
Her long tenure as first a member and then chair of the Athletes’ Commission is likely to make her a more personable figure to athletes – with those on the IOC committee believed to have voted for her en masse.
But while she represents a departure from the IOC’s traditional presidential mould of greying white men, her fairly unmemorable campaign, and the prominent figure of Bach in her camp, indicate that we are unlikely to enter a brave new era of the IOC.
In some ways, Coventry was positioned as a continuity candidate compared to the more radical pitches of the outspoken Seb Coe, who urged more “transparency” in the organisation, and the environmentally-concerned Johan Eliasch, who suggested the IOC should conserve a rainforest the size of each Olympic city. Coventry’s manifesto had no such wild ideas, and with Bach made an honorary president this week, his influence – and his style of running the IOC – is unlikely to disappear.
