GENEVA: Two-time Olympic Champion Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe officially assumed on Monday the office of the president of the Internati...
GENEVA: Two-time Olympic Champion Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe officially assumed on Monday the office of the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), replacing Germany’s Thomas Bach.
Coventry, 41, was elected to head the Olympic body after voting at the 144th IOC’s Session in Greece last March made her the first-ever female IOC president.
In all, seven candidates vied for the IOC presidency at the organization’s 144th session, held in Greece from March 18-21. In addition to Coventry, the list of candidates included Sebastian Coe (Great Britain), Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr (Spain), Morinari Watanabe (Japan), David Lappartient (France), Johan Eliasch (Great Britain) and Prince Faisal bin Hussein (Jordan).
Zimbabwe’s Coventry is a two-time Olympic swimming champion in the 200-meter backstroke (2004 and 2008). She also has three Olympic silvers and one bronze, in addition to being a three-time world champion.
The newly-elected IOC president had served as Zimbabwe's Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture since 2018. Coventry has been a member of the IOC Executive Board since 2023, previously also holding a seat on the board between 2018 and 2021.
In late February, the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board accepted previous IOC president Thomas Bach’s resignation. He had helmed the international organization for 12 years.
Olympic gold medalist Bach was elected president of the IOC in 2013 at the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires for a term of eight years.
Bach won his Olympic gold in the team foil competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. After serving his initial eight-year term as IOC president, he ran for another four-year term in the 2021 elections, where he was the sole candidate and was ultimately re-elected.
IOC sanctions against Russia, Belarus
On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to prohibit athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.
In late March, 2023, the IOC recommended allowing individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in international sports tournaments, but only under specific conditions. Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status. Russia and Belarus were also banned from participating in international team events.
On October 12, 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions as its members.
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