The New IOC Boss

A Minister in a corrupt government becomes the most powerful person in sport

Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was in those days, used to be known as the breadbasket of Africa. A country with fertile soils and a temperate climate that produced ample food for itself, its neighbours and the world.

But that was before the War of Independence and the rise to power of Robert Mugabe in 1980. First as Prime Minister, then as President, Mugabe oversaw the destruction of the nation’s economy and the forced confiscation of productive land from white farmers by black enforcers.

Mugabe was ousted as leader of his ZANU-PF party in 2018 and died in 2019. His successor as President, Emerson Mnangagwa, appointed Zimbabwe’s most decorated sportsperson, the two-time Olympic backstroke champion Kirsty Coventry, as the country’s Minister of Youth, Sport Arts and Recreation in 2019, a position she has held since.

She will now relinquish that role as she and her family ( husband Tyrone Seward and two young children) move to Lausanne in Switzerland for her to become the President of the International Olympic Committee.

It is a quite remarkable rise to this pinnacle of sporting power and influence.

She is a mere 41 years old. There were six candidates to replace Thomas Bach as the IOC President including another two-time Olympic champion, the British athletics legend Lord Sebastian Coe.

It was expected there would be numerous rounds of voting before one candidate emerged with an outright majority among the 97 voting delegates.

Instead Coventry won in the first round with 49 votes. Coe received eight.

As Minister of Sport in Zimbabwe for six years Coventry has seen her country banned from hosting international football matches since 2020 because of safety concerns at their stadiums. At the Paris Olympics last year Zimbabwe had a delegation of 74, but there were just nine athletes. Coventry also accepted a gift of $US100,000 from Robert Mugabe after her 2008 gold medal win in Beijing at a time of hyper-inflation and widespread hunger in her home country.

Sebastian Coe was chairman of the organising committee for the hugely successful 2012 London Olympics, is chair of World Athletics and is unequivocal on the rights of real women in women’s competition.

But by using his sport’s affluence to pay all Olympic track and field champions $50,000 prizemoney at last year’s Paris games, Coe alienated many conservative minded IOC members. They include the outgoing IOC boss Thomas Bach who believe that while most Olympians may be full time professionals, Olympic glory is a prize in itself and should not be directly rewarded.

During his twelve years in the job Bach has appointed more than two thirds of the current voting members. Coventry was his preferred successor. Bach has most likely called on the members he appointed to repay his loyalty with a vote for Coventry.

Her overwhelming victory is not surprising considering the intensely political nature of the world’s richest sporting body. If Bach wanted her, he was always likely to get her.

But for Coe, who seemed by far the most qualified for the job, to be humiliated in the way he was is a slap in the face for common sense and decency.

Ms Coventry ticks the right boxes in the world of DEI – namely a woman and an African, albeit a white one – but her record as a politician and sports administrator in terms of achievement and conviction on controversial issues like transgender athletes is underwhelming.

Bach didn’t mind Imane Khelife winning a gold medal in women’s boxing last year despite having XY chromosomes.

Coventry says she will “set up a task force that will look and analyse everything.”

Sebastian Coe stated unequivocally late last year "It's a very clear proposition to me — if you do not protect the female category, or if you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women's sport."

Coventry’s position as a member of the Zimbabwean government, a government whose election in 2023 was declared undemocratic and unfair by observers, has made little difference to her extraordinary ascension.

Which proves once again that in sport as in life it’s not what you know but who you know that makes all the difference.

But as Ms Coventry said when questioned about her approach to Donald Trump, a noted opponent of transgender athletes in women’s sport, and who will be the incumbent US President at the time of 2028 Los Angeles Olympics “I have been used to dealing with difficult men since I was 20 years old.”

The next Olympiad should be fun.