Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe was elected president of the International Olympic Committee Thursday, becoming the Switzerland-based organization’s first woman and first African leader.
“This is an extraordinary moment,” Coventry said after the election in brief remarks to the IOC session meeting in Greece. Seen as the choice of outgoing IOC President Thomas Bach, Coventry won in the first round of voting over six other IOC members.
Coventry, the youngest in the race at 41, was elected to an eight-year term but will be eligible to run for a second term of four years, meaning she could be the IOC president presiding over Utah’s 2034 Winter Games.
Dealing with ‘difficult men in high positions’ like Trump
For now, she faces issues like U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for the IOC to bar transgender athletes from the Olympics and his warning transgender athletes will be prevented from entering the United States to compete in the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
“I have been dealing with, let’s say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old,” Coventry later told reporters when asked about Trump. “First and foremost, what I have learned is that communication will be key. That is something that will happen early on.”
But, she added that she believes “President Trump is a huge lover of sports. He will want these Games to be significant. He will want them to be a success and we will not waiver from our values.”
Coventry described those values as “solidarity and ensuring every athlete that qualifies for the Olympic Games has the possibility to attend the Olympic Games and be safe during the Olympic Games.”
She announced a task force will be formed to review the IOC’s current policy on transgender athletes in place since 2021 that leaves eligibility decisions up to the individual international sports federations.
“My stance is that we will protect the female category, and female athletes,” Coventry said, noting the issue was raised repeatedly during her campaign. “I want to work together with the international federations and I want the IOC to take a little bit more of a leading role.”
Stopping short of agreeing with Trump’s position as some other candidates in the IOC presidential race did, Coventry said while there’s no need to “redo the work” done by the federations on the issue, she wants to see “a little bit more unity in the discussion.”
Pressed about whether she would stand up to Trump, Coventry said “once we’ve made the decision collectively, with the IOC, with the international federations, that decision will be made very clear and we won’t move from that decision.”
Bach spoke to reporters separately about “the very good relations” established with the Trump administration by LA. 2028 organizers and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, saying the IOC has no reason to be worried about the next Summer Games.
Making history at the IOC
During her first meeting with the international press as the IOC’s president-elect, Coventry was also asked repeatedly about making history as the first woman to fill what’s been described as the most powerful — and most political — role in sports.
She thanked an IOC member from the U.S., Anita DeFrantz, for having “paved the way for me” as the first woman to seek the presidency, in 2001. Coventry said it’s something she hopes to do for her two young daughters, one about to turn 6 and the other, born less than six months ago.
“It wasn’t just about being a woman or being from Africa,” Coventry said of the months-long campaign for IOC president, conducted almost entirely out of the public eye. “I’m so grateful that the members saw more than just gender or where I come from.”
An Olympic champion swimmer, she competed in five Summer Games and for Auburn University in Alabama. She joined the IOC in 2013 as a member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission and became a member of the powerful IOC Executive Board.
Since 2018, Coventry has been a sports minister in her native Zimbabwe since 2018, but will step down and move to Switzerland. She will become the IOC president in June, when Bach’s term ends under a new handover policy.
Bach’s 12-year tenure as leader was celebrated Wednesday with his election as “Honorary President for Life” by IOC members, a ceremonial position he’ll assume when his presidential term ends on June 23. Bach has served on the IOC for 34 years.
How Utah’s Olympic organizers see the new IOC president
The leaders of Utah’s next Olympics didn’t have a favorite in the race, Fraser Bullock, the Utah organizing committee president and executive chair, has said, pledging “whoever it is, we’ll be 100% on board.”
Bullock said her election “represents a bight future for the Olympic movement and the unity it brings to our world.”
Utah organizers, he said, “will look to her guidance as an accomplished Olympic champion, and a young, next-generational leader who has been a strong athlete voice and understands full well the impact the Olympic movement can have on humanity.”
A new president is likely to bring changes to the IOC, Bullock said, “to evolve with the world, and the changing elements we see in the world. What those are, I don’t know. But I look forward to learning more as she embarks on her leadership.”
Bullock dismissed any suggestion that Trump and the direction he’s taking the county influenced the IOC vote. “I don’t think actions in the United States impacted this election,” he said. “I think she won this election on her own merits.”
The race had been seen as between Coventry; Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe, the head of the international track and field federation known as World Athletics; and Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., an IOC vice president and the son of a former IOC president.
But in the end, it wasn’t even close. The IOC said Coventry received 49 of the 97 votes cast in a secret ballot. Samaranch received 28 votes; Coe, eight; France’s David Lappartient, 4; Japan’s Morinari Wantanabe, 4; Great Britain’s Johan Eliasch, 2; and Jordan’s Prince Feisal Al Hussein, 2.
The announcement of her win, made by Bach, was greeted with prolonged applause, cheers and even a few whistles from the IOC members gathered for their annual meeting near the site of the ancient Olympics.
Coventry told IOC members that her victory “is not just a huge honor, but it is a reminder to my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organization with so much pride, with the values at the core.”
Before Thursday’s vote, IOC members heard from leaders of four of the next five Olympics starting with the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy. Utah’s 2034 Winter Games, however, provided a written report to the session.
Bullock said he was told a month ago there wouldn’t be time to make a presentation at the session. He said the report was a brief update on the newly formed organizing committee and would not be made public.
