Olympics – 144th session IOC – Costa Navarino, Pylos, Greece – March 20, 2025 Kirsty Coventry looks while she is elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Reuters / Louisa Gouliamaki
Pylos, Greece – Kirsty, Coventry, struck the glass ceiling on the Olympic International Committee on Thursday to become the first woman and first African president of the organization in 130 years of history.
Zimbabwean swimming big, already an imposing figure in the Olympic circles, came out victorious to replace Thomas Bach, guaranteeing the best job in world sport and inaugurating a new era for games.
“It’s a really powerful signal,” she smiled while victory was going on. “It is a signal that we are really global and that we have evolved into a organization that is really open to diversity and we will continue.”
Coventry only needed a voting round to win the race to succeed Bach, winning an immediate global majority in the secret ballot with 49 of the 97 votes available.
The Kirsty Coventry gold medalist of Zimbabwe famous on the podium after having set a world record in the 200m swimming women’s swimming final for Rome on August 1, 2009.
She beat Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. in second place, the Spaniard winning 28 votes. Sebastian Coe, in Great Britain, considered one of the leading runners in the days preceding the vote, arrived third with eight votes.
The remaining votes went to French David Lappartient, Prince Feisal de Jordan, Johan Eliasch, born in Swedish, and Morinari Watanabe from Japan.
“It is not only an immense honor, but it is a reminder of my commitment to each of you that I will direct this organization with so much pride,” said Coventry radiating to his colleagues members of the CIO at Luxury Seaside Resort in the southwest of the Peloponnese of Greece which organized the session of the IOC.
“I will make you all very, very proud and, hopefully, extremely confident with the choice you made today, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she added.
Coventry said she wanted to bring together all the candidates.
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“I will sit with President Bach. We are going to have a few months for a transfer repurchase. And what I want to focus on is to bring together all the candidates. There have been so many good ideas and exchanges in the last six months.
“Look at the IOC and our Olympic movement and our family and decide how we are going to move forward in the future. What do we want to focus on in the first six months? I have some ideas, but part of my campaign was to listen to the members of the IOC and to hear what they have to say and to hear how we want to move. ”
Unit demonstration
Olympic – 144th session IOC – Costa Navarino, Pylos, Greece – March 20, 2025 Kirsty Coventry at the press conference after being elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Reuters / Louisa Gouliamaki TPX Images of the day (IOC)
Coventry’s landslide in the first round was a unity demonstration in the body, she said.
“It is extremely important that we must be a united front and we have to work together. We do not do it and we may not always agree, but we must be able to come together for the improvement of the movement. ” The Olympic medalist sustainability of the games.
Champion of sport development in Africa, Coventry is committed to extending Olympic participation and guaranteeing that the games remain relevant to the young generations.
It also inherits the complex task of navigating relations with global sports federations and sponsors while maintaining the financial stability of the IOC, which has relied heavily on its dissemination and sponsorship agreements of several billion dollars.
As it takes over, the global sports community will watch closely to see how Coventry shapes the future of the world’s largest multi-sport organization.
All CIO members with a superstitious sequence could rest more easily tonight – the golden touch of Kirsty Coventry in Greece shows no sign of discoloration.
Champion at Athens 2004, again victorious in Pylos, the omens accumulate.
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“Greece seems to be my lucky one,” she smiles.
