Kirsty Coventry defeats Samaranch to become the first female IOC president

BarcelonaThe 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.

"As a child, when I started playing sports, I never expected to experience this moment," Coventry said. With a university education in the United States and a recent year working for the IOC in the area of athletes, Coventry, who won seven Olympic medals, was a close confidant of the current president, German Thomas Bach. With her success, the IOC's modernization triumphs, with the first female president, who is also the first African, and a young figure. Never before has such a young person been elected, which will allow her to serve an eight-year term and run for re-election. Coventry will take office in June.

The election took place on the second day of the 144th IOC session, which has been held since Wednesday at the Costa Navarino Hotel in Greece, an hour's drive from the ancient Olympia site. Coventry's victory came as a surprise on the first ballot, when she achieved an absolute majority of 96 votes. Everyone assumed that there would be a need for multiple votes because there were seven candidates, but that wasn't the case. Officially, Bach couldn't ask for a vote for any candidate, and she hadn't, but it was assumed she preferred Coventry. And she won.

Samaranch was the second-highest vote-getter, with 28. In fact, the election results paint a picture where the Barcelona native was the only candidate with a chance of competing with Coventry. The day's big loser was Britain's Sebastian Coe, Olympic champion in the 1,500 meters in 1980 and 1984, a key figure in organizing the 2012 London Olympics, and current president of World Athletics, the international athletics federation. Coe had the support of the British press and claimed he had a chance of winning. In truth, he only garnered eight votes. Frenchman David Lappartient, current president of the International Cycling Union, garnered four votes; Japanese Morinario Watanabe, president of the International Gymnastics Federation, garnered four; Jordanian Prince Faisal al-Hussein (61), current member of the IOC Executive Board, garnered two; and Swedish British passport holder Johan Eliasch (63), current president of the International Winter Sports Federation, garnered two more.

From Harare to the Olympic summit

A great specialist in the backstroke, the style that earned her seven Olympic medals—two gold—Coventry has clearly achieved success compared to Coe and Samaranch. At 41 years old and born in Harare, she served as her country's Minister of Sports and founded an academy to promote swimming among disadvantaged communities. A member of the white community of British origin in a majority-Black country, she got along well with the current Zimbabwean government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa. She had previously received awards from dictator Robert Mugabe, with whom she had a complex relationship. As an athlete, she had a long career, especially after moving to the United States to train, specifically in Alabama. She participated in five Olympics, from 2000 to 2016, and became the greatest African swimmer of all time. After retiring, she joined the IOC in 2013 as an athletes' representative. She was president of the athletes' commission and, as such, between 2018 and 2021 she served on the executive board, her first contact with the IOC's governing body.

Her electoral platform attempted to garner diverse support with proposals on which she did not take too sides, except when she clearly spoke out against the participation of transgender women in women's competitions – she considers it to be "unfair" – which could help her negotiate with the Trump administration ahead of the Summer Games. She opted for a campaign in which she did not want to emphasize being a woman and African, and prioritized demanding that the person chosen had been a top-level athlete. Only she and Sebastian Coe had been.

Boxing will be at the 2028 Games.

Today's IOC session also unanimously approved the inclusion of boxing in the program of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, a decision that ends its temporary exclusion due to the disqualification of the sport by the previous international federation (IBA). The provisional recognition granted by the IOC in February to the new World Boxing Federation cleared the way for the reinstatement of this historic sport to the Games, where it has participated since 1904 in the men's division and since 2012 in the women's division.