"Are you aware that you're the person who will command the most in world sport?" her husband recently asked Kirsty Coventry before breakfast. "I looked at him as if to say... what does he say?" Coventry explained these days. The former Olympic swimming champion is now the first woman to preside over the International Olympic Committee, following the ceremony this Monday in which German Thomas Bach handed over the reins to her. A historic milestone, given that she is the first woman to head the institution founded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 and the first African. She is also the second youngest person to become president, at 41, behind only de Coubertin, who took office at 33.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has elected a new president, and for the first time, it will be a woman: Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe. The former swimmer will be the tenth president in a list that began with Greek Dimitrios Vikelas in 1894 after surprisingly winning an absolute majority in the first round of voting, ahead of names such as Britain's Sebastian Coe and Catalonia's Joan Antoni Samaranch. The Barcelona-born leader will no longer be able to emulate his father, president from 1980 to 2001, as he is too old to stand in the next election.