Former Zimbabwean swimmer Kirsty Coventry on Monday took over the leadership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from Thomas Bach in a ceremony with the 2028 Los Angeles Games already threatening to fill her in-tray to overflowing.
Coventry, who started her eight-year spell officially yesterday as the most powerful sports administrator in the world, became the first woman and first African to be elected head of the IOC in March.
Much of the discussion during campaigning focused on the IOC’s need for change in its marketing strategies with several top Olympic sponsors having left in the past 12 months.
Photo: Reuters
However, with Los Angeles hit by protests against immigration raids, and relations tense between state and city officials, and the US government, the 2028 Games have become the major talking point in the movement that would ordinarily be focusing on next year’s Milano-Cortina Winter Games.
Coventry has long-standing ties with the US, dating back to her time as a leading swimmer at Auburn University in Alabama. That would prove useful ahead of the Los Angeles Games, and she has said, she would seek to meet with US President Donald Trump to discuss the Games.
Coventry would also need to find time to help secure the long-term finances of the movement. The IOC, which generates billions of dollars in revenues each year in sponsorship and broadcasting deals for the Olympics, has secured US$7.3 billion for 2025-2028 and US$6.2 billion for 2029-2032. More contracts are expected for both periods.
Coventry is also expected to continue the IOC’s plans to expand commercial opportunities for sponsors at the Olympics with the organization’s finances in a robust state and the privately funded Los Angeles Olympics a good place to start.
Coventry needed only one round of voting to clinch the race to succeed Bach, beating six other candidates, making history for the African continent, with the IOC having been ruled for 131 years by European or North American men.
Her background and being the first female president would be assets in a diverse IOC membership and the international makeup of Olympic stakeholders.
On Monday she was handed the golden key to the IOC by Bach, who was the organization’s president for 12 years.
“I am really honored I get to walk this journey with you. I cannot wait for anything that lies ahead,” Coventry said in her address to IOC members and other Olympic stakeholders.
“I know I have the best team to support me and our movement over the next eight years,” she said.
Coventry is to hold a two-day workshop this week to get feedback from members on key IOC issues.
“Working together, and consistently finding ways to strengthen and keep united our movement that will ensure that we wake up daily ... to continue to inspire,” she said.
A seven-times Olympic medalist, Coventry won 200m backstroke gold at the 2004 Athens Games and in Beijing four years later.
“With her election, you have also sent a powerful message to the world: The IOC continues to evolve,” Bach said in his speech. “With Kirsty Coventry, the Olympic movement will be in the best of hands.”
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