The favorite of the President of Zimbabwe and the successor of Bach. 5 facts about the new head of the Coventry IOC

Kirsty Coventry has become the new president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). She is a two-time Olympic swimming champion in 2004 and 2008 and has been Zimbabwe's Minister of Sports since 2018. She is considered as the successor of the previous head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, who will resign on June 23. What is known about the first woman in charge of the main sports organization in the world is in the Izvestia article.

Fact 1. Africa's Best Athlete

Coventry's sporting career has been quite remarkable. She competed at five Olympic Games from 2000 to 2016. In 2004 and 2008, she won medals in all the sports she participated in: two gold medals in the 200 m backstroke, two silver medals in the half-length distance, two more silver medals in the 200 m and 400 m medley, and a bronze in the 200 m medley.

• At that time, Coventry's seven medals were a repeat of the record for the number of individual Olympic medals among swimmers. Since then, he has been surpassed only by Americans Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky. In addition, Coventry is the most decorated African athlete at the Olympic Games in terms of medals. For Zimbabwe, she has won seven of the eight awards in that country's history.

In the Olympic movement: how Kirsty Coventry became the new president of the IOC

The sports organization will be headed by a two-time champion of the Games in swimming from Zimbabwe.

Coventry has achieved several other notable achievements in sports. In 2008, she won four gold and a bronze at the World Short Course Swimming Championships, breaking three world records along the way. In the medal table, she single-handedly beat all the national teams except the USA, Australia and the Netherlands. In long water, the athlete won three world championships and finished second five times. During her lifetime, Coventry broke seven world records in the long and short pools.

Fact 2. The heroine of Zimbabwe

Coventry achieved significant results in swimming thanks to her training in the USA, which did not prevent her from becoming one of the national heroines of Zimbabwe. In 2004, after successfully competing at the Athens Olympics, she met with President Robert Mugabe. He called Coventry the golden girl and handed her $50,000, calling it pocket money. The athlete also became the owner of a Zimbabwe diplomatic passport, and children were named after her. Coventry received such honors amid the persecution of white people that was taking place in the country at the time.

Four years later, after the Beijing Olympics, Coventry hosted a gala reception in Zimbabwe again. This time, Mugabe handed her $100,000, which was 180 times the country's GDP per capita at that time. She received the money in a suitcase from the hands of the head of the Central Bank. Later it became known that Coventry donated part of the funds to charity.

Fact 3. Sports functionary

Coventry began her career in sports politics in 2012, when she participated in the election of members of the IOC Athletes' Commission. Membership in this body gives the opportunity to choose the cities that host the Olympic Games and participate in the discussion of decisions within the IOC. The four athletes with the most votes were to join the commission.

• Initially, Coventry did not qualify, finishing in fifth place. However, two athletes, Koji Murofushi of Japan and Zhu Muyan of Taiwan, were disqualified for violating the rules of campaigning. The IOC justified this by saying that the Japanese Olympic Committee distributed flyers calling for voting for Murofushi, and Zhu Muyan distributed lollipops to other athletes. After their appeals were not satisfied, Coventry officially became a member of the commission.

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• Coventry subsequently began to actively move up the career ladder within the IOC. In 2018, she became the chairman of the Athletes' commission and joined the IOC Executive Committee, and in 2023 she was elected an individual member of the IOC. Coventry currently leads two commissions that coordinate the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane and the first African Youth Olympic Games – 2026 in Dakar.

Fact 4. Zimbabwe's Minister of Sports

• After Mugabe's overthrow in 2017, Coventry also joined the government of Zimbabwe's next president, Emerson Mnangagwa. She took up the post of head of the Ministry of Youth Affairs, Sports, Arts and Recreation. Coventry is the only white person in the current Cabinet of Zimbabwe.

• Coventry has received some criticism in her post. Under her leadership, the Zimbabwe national football team temporarily lost its membership in FIFA, and also lost the right to host matches due to the lack of safe stadiums. The media also drew attention to the fact that during the last 2024 Olympics in Paris, the Zimbabwean delegation included 74 people, of whom only nine were athletes.

Fact 5. Bach's successor

• In the fall of 2024, Coventry began competing for the IOC presidency. She became one of the seven candidates to replace Thomas Bach. The former swimmer was considered by experts as his approved successor, but she denied claims of his support. She did not express a firm position on the participation of Russians in international competitions.

• Coventry wrote her campaign program with her husband and hired one assistant to run the campaign, unlike the other candidates who had their own promotion teams. As a result, she won the election in the first round, gaining the minimum required number of votes for this. Coventry became the first woman and the first African woman to head the IOC. In addition, at 41, she will become the youngest president of the organization after its founder Pierre de Coubertin.