Greece: Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe was elected as the 10th President of the International Olympic Committee, and the first female President in IOC history, following 1 round of voting at the 144th IOC Session in Costa Navarino, Greece.
The IOC President-elect, who will assume office after a handover on June 23, was elected for an eight-year term of office, the first woman and first African to serve in that position.
Kirsty Coventry has been elected the 10th President of the International Olympic Committee.
The 41-year-old Zimbabwean was chosen in a secret ballot of seven candidates at the 144th IOC Session being held in Costa Navarino, Greece, on Thursday (20 March), for an eight-year term of office.
President-elect Coventry replaces outgoing President Thomas Bach, who was first elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2021. She received 49 votes in the first round, exactly the number required for a majority from the 97 votes cast.
She will be the first woman and the first African to serve as IOC President. “I’m very proud to call myself a Zimbabwean and to have grown up there, for my mum to have been born there, my grandmother,” she told Olympics.com afterwards. “And, [my message] to Africa: this is our time.”
President-elect Coventry will assume office after the handover from President Bach on Olympic Day, June 23. President Bach, who remains in the role until then, will also resign as an IOC Member after the transfer of power and will then assume the role of Honorary President.
“This is an extraordinary moment. As a nine-year-old girl I never thought I’d be standing up here one day, getting to give back to this incredible Movement of ours,” President-elect Coventry told the Session in her acceptance speech.
“This is not just a huge honor but it is a reminder of my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organization with so much pride, with the Values at the core. And I will make all of you very, very proud, and hopefully extremely confident in the decision that you have taken today. Now we’ve got some work together. This race was an incredible race and it made us better, made us a stronger Movement.”
The President-elect will oversee the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 as her first Olympic Games, with under 11 months to go to the Opening Ceremony.
President Bach said of his successor’s election: “Congratulations to Kirsty Coventry on her election as the 10th IOC President. I warmly welcome the decision of the IOC Members and look forward to strong cooperation, particularly during the transition period. There is no doubt that the future for our Olympic Movement is bright and that the values we stand for will continue to guide us through the years to come.”
Minister in Zimbabwe
President-elect Coventry is currently an IOC Member and the Minister of Sport, Art & Recreation in Zimbabwe. She has been the country’s Minister of Sport since 2018. Additionally, she served as a Vice President of the International Surfing Federation from 2017 to 2024.
The former swimmer was first elected as an IOC Member as a member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission in 2013 and served in that role until 2021, when she was elected as an individual member.
The President-elect was elected Chair of the IOC Athletes Commission in 2018, becoming a member of the IOC Executive Board in the process. The 41-year-old was also the IOC Athlete Representative on the World Anti-Doping Agency from 2012-2021 and a member of WADA’s Athlete Committee from 2014-2021.
A Harare native, President-elect Coventry competed at five different Olympic Games. Between her debut at Sydney 2000 and competing for the final time at Rio 2016, she won seven Olympic medals (two gold, four silver, one bronze), taking gold in the 200m backstroke at Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. No other African athlete has won more Olympic medals.
She also won three long-course World Championship gold medals and four short-course titles during her career, in addition to a Commonwealth Games gold and 14 African Games golds.
President-elect Coventry said afterwards of being the first woman and first African elected to the position: “It’s a really powerful signal, a signal that we’re truly global and that we have evolved into an organization that is truly open to diversity and how we’re going to continue walking that road in the next eight years.”
And she had words of encouragement for her fellow candidates. “What I want to focus on is to bring all the candidates together,” she said. “There were so many good ideas and exchanges over the last six months, I’d really like to leverage all of that.”
