For almost 30 minutes, IOC members and officials sat in tense silence in the windowless auditorium of the Costa Navarino hotel in Greece while the vote was verified. The IOC president, Thomas Bach, finally returned with his compliance officers and a white card in his hand. He stepped on to the stage and as he turned over the card, revealing the name “Kirsty Coventry” in block capitals, some of the IOC’s younger female members shed tears of joy.
For so long, the International Olympic Committee has been the domain of men. More specifically, since its inception in 1894, eight of the nine presidents have been greying European men (the sole exception was the former decathlete Avery Brundage, elected in 1952 – he was a greying American man). But in June, Coventry – a decorated Zimbabwean swimmer turned politician – will officially become the first woman, and first African, to lead the Olympic movement.
The result would have been unthinkable until only recently. The IOC held a men-only membership until 1981, and the only previous woman to stand for the presidency, the American former rower Anita DeFrantz, was eliminated in the first round in 2001. But gradually the deeply conservative IOC has entered the modern world, accelerating gender equality both in sport and inside the hierarchy under Bach’s leadership.
As Coventry walked up to the stage to accept the presidency, she embraced her beaten rivals. Among them was Lord Coe, who finished in a distant third place. Coe felt this role was his destiny, the natural culmination of a perfectly carved career path: winning Olympic gold on the track; winning a seat in parliament; winning London the 2012 Olympics against all odds; and winning the presidency of World Athletics, the Olympics’ king sport.
Here was a natural winner with a bullet-proof CV, hitting every checkmark on the road to power. He arrived in Greece this week with confidence in his campaign message, in which he vowed to protect the female category and devolve power to the athletes. Heavyweights from the world of sport and politics lined up to endorse him on social media, from Usain Bolt and Mo Farah to Manchester United and Boris Johnson. “I feel there is momentum,” Coe said on Thursday.
But few of his backers were holding an electronic keypad in their hand in that auditorium. When the results were made public Coe was nowhere, winning only eight votes out of 97 cast by the IOC’s members. Coe had lost the room. But then he never really held it.
Two things went against him, one of which was somewhat self-inflicted. In his influential role as president of World Athletics, Coe has been outspoken on major issues and often butted heads with the IOC, most notably after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he banned Russians and Belarusians from athletics, going against the IOC’s recommendation to accept them as individual neutral athletes. “I am not neutral,” Coe memorably said, in what felt like a pointed retort.
The most contentious moment came when Coe suddenly announced last spring that athletics gold medallists at Paris 2024 would be awarded $50,000 prize money. IOC leaders were stunned and felt he was “playing solo” on a sensitive issue that conflicted with the Olympics’ roots in amateur sport. One member told The Independent in the build-up to this election that Coe was “loathed” by senior Olympic figures, while a member high up in the hierarchy added: “He doesn’t show a lot of love for the IOC.”
Coe’s supporters would argue he was principled, headstrong and determined, showing the tenets of leadership rather than playing a political game. The IOC felt he showed disregard. Bach certainly didn’t want him to become president. If there was going to be an established name succeeding him it was more likely to be vice-president Juan Antonio Samaranch: smooth and slick, respected and popular on the inside, whose father was president for 21 years. Samaranch has two decades’ experience as a member while Coe is a relative newcomer having only been made a member in 2020.
But his defeat was also a symptom of a wider shift inside the IOC, of something much bigger than just his taut relationship with its leaders.
The membership is a weirdly secretive and exclusive club made up of royalty, billionaires, business leaders, sports executives and athletes from around the globe. The 109 members include a Mongolian banker, a former Cape Verdean school teacher, a Fijian doctor, an Oscar-winning actress, a Bhutanese prince, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and HRH Princess Anne. It is an eclectic bunch but it is hardly democracy in action: Princess Nora of Liechtenstein has been a member for 41 years.
But increasingly it has become a more youthful and more gender-balanced pool, partly after Bach encouraged an influx of recently retired athletes, with the proportion of women now past 40 per cent. These new female members were a key part of Coventry’s support base. As one source texted The Independent from yesterday’s vote: “Younger IOC members voted for Coventry because they wanted generational change. Many of the other candidates simply looked too old school.”
This was an election about more than sport. The IOC president is a powerful figure on the world stage with sway across global politics – the first person to call and congratulate Bach on winning the 2013 election was Vladimir Putin. The members looked at the new world order run by strongmen like Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, who will inevitably hijack the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles for his own ends, and chose Coventry to represent them.
Against Coe, Samaranch and the rest, the 41-year-old stood out as dynamic and energetic, with recent experience of being an Olympian (Coe was the only other ex-athlete among the seven candidates) and an impressive record at the IOC, particularly in representing Olympians as chair of the Athletes’ Commission. All seven candidates cheered about “athlete empowerment” but when it came from Coventry, the message carried real meaning.
It was an open secret that she was Bach’s favoured pick, to the point that his private endorsement of her irked some of the other candidates. This was the final act of his 12-year reign, and perhaps it is one of his most significant legacies: that in reshaping the IOC’s membership he has pulled up the golden ladder from beneath, ensuring men like him – like Samaranch, like Coe – no longer hold hegemony over the Olympic throne.
