Kirsty Coventry Among Seven Candidates for IOC Presidency
International Swimming Hall of Famer Kirsty Coventry was named Monday as one of seven candidates to succeed Thomas Bach as the president of the International Olympic Committee.
Coventry is the only female candidate. The Zimbabwean is the only representative of Africa.
Coventry won seven Olympic medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, including consecutive gold medals in the women’s 200 backstroke and silvers in the 100 back at both Games. In Beijing, she added silver medals in the 200 and 400 individual medley. She is a seven-time World Champion (three long-course, four short-course) and a five-time world record holder (four long-course). She is the most decorated Olympic athlete from Africa and Swimming World’s African Female Swimmer of the Millennium. She was inducted to ISHOF in 2023.
Coventry has been an IOC member since 2012, beginning with the IOC Athletes Commission, a committee she would eventually chair. She served in that role through the end of her swimming career at the 2016 Olympics, her fifth. She was elected to the IOC Executive Committee in 2023. In her home country, she was named the Minster of Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation, a cabinet position, in 2019 and reappointed to the role in 2023.
Candidates faced a Sept. 15 deadline to apply. They will campaign before the IOC membership at a convention in Lausanne, Switzerland, in January 2025 with the election to follow at the 143rd session of the IOC in Greece on March 18-21.
Bach, who has been in power since 2013, announced in August that he will not seek to stay on beyond the allotted 12 years – an eight-year first term and a four-year second term – that would’ve required changes to the Olympic charter.
Also running for the position are:
- Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, the head of that nation’s Olympic committee since 2003 and an IOC executive board member since 2019
- Sebastian Coe of the United Kingdom, the head of World Athletics since 2015 and the former chairman of the British Olympic Association, seen by many experts as the favorite for the job given his global profile and the international reach of his sport
- Johan Eliasch, the Swedish-born head of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation
- David Lappartient, the Frenchman who heads the Union Cycliste Internationale
- Juan Antonio Samaranch, an IOC vice president from Spain and the son of the IOC’s president from 1980-2001
- Morinari Watanabe of Japan, an IOC member since 2018 and the president of the International Gymnastics Federation