Sean Ingle’s profile of Kirsty Coventry …
Coventry’s press conference is now over, and it is time for me, in turn, to abruptly end my broadcast. Thanks for keeping me company in this difficult time. I leave you with the final words of Kirsty Coventry’s first press conference as the IOC’s president-elect:
I hope the world is going to look at this as an incredible opportunity to be inspired. We embrace diversity and it’s what makes humanity in all forms the best, and we want to be able to leverage that.
Something to ponder there, I’m sure we all agree. Bye!
The IOC abruptly ends their broadcast, though a couple of broadcasters are still going. Coventry is asked about gender equality within the Olympic movement:
That’s the challenge, right? We did an incredible job in Paris and under the leadership of Thomas Bach we’ve done an incredible job within our IOC membership, and now we need to filter that through into the national federations, into the committees. At some point we’re going to have to be very specific with what it is we are requiring, and what it is we are trying to achieve, and potentially put in quotas to start with. And once we get that culture change and that embrace, then we’ll be able to say we are winning when it comes to gender equality.
Coventry is still speaking, but the ICC have turned the microphones off again.
Coventry is asked how important it is for the IOC to be unified as it heads towards the Los Angeles Olympics.
It’s huge. This is our platform. The IOC has lasted so many generations because it brings people together. This is our biggest platform to showcase the good in humanity and our shared values. The success of Paris, you all saw how it ignited a common ground, a common understanding, between all of us and we want to continue that into the future.
And she’s also asked whether the overwhelming nature of her election is a sign that there is unity:
It’s extremely important. We have to be united. We have to work together. We might not always agree but we have to be able to come together for the betterment of the organisation
They have turned on the microphones! Kirsty Coventry is being interviewed. This is what she says about being the first woman, and the first African, to become IOC president:
It’s a really powerful signal. It’s a signal that we’re truly global, and that we have evolved into an organisation that is truly open to diversity. And we’re going to continue walking that road in the next eight years.
Sean Ingle’s report from Costa Navarino has landed! And here it is:
The former Olympic swimming champion Kirsty Coventry has become the first woman to lead the International Olympic Committee in its 131-year history, after winning a shock first round win over a seven-strong field that included Britain’s Sebastian Coe.
The 41-year-old Coventry won 49 of the 97 votes of the IOC membership, giving her an immediate majority and also making her the first African to become IOC president and the most powerful woman in global sport.
But it was a crushing day for Coe, who was widely accepted to have the best CV, having won two Olympic gold medals, run the London 2012 Games and having been World Athletics president since 2015. He only secured eight votes, putting him in third place behind the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, who picked up 28 votes.
Much more here:
The IOC live broadcast has now admitted reality, announcing that it is “experiencing some technical difficulties” and “will be back shortly”.
He looks very cheerful when it ends, though. A very broad grin, and a friendly wave. He looks like he’d give good hugs, does Thomas Bach.
I can, if it helps, describe Bach’s body language. At times he has looked quite energetic, emphasising points with right-hand air-punches in the manner of someone saying something very important indeed.
This is reassuring in a way. Everything up to now had appeared, for all the unnecessary delays, a bit too competent for my liking.
They are also broadcasting it silently in French.
Updated
The IOC are now broadcasting a press conference with Thomas Bach. Unhelpfully, they seem to have turned the sound off.
And this is how the announcement of Coventry’s election went down:
The results are in!
The IOC have now published the results of the single round of voting, and they were as follows:
Valid votes cast: 97
Kirsty Coventry: 49
Juan Antonio Samaranch: 28
Sebastian Coe: 8
David Lappartient: 4
Morinari Watanabe: 4
Prince Feisal Al Hussein: 2
Johan Eliasch: 2
So with 97 votes cast a candidate needed to win at least 49 of them to secure a majority, and that is precisely what Coventry achieved.
Here’s PA Media’s take on Coventry’s election, and indeed Sebastian Coe’s non-election:
Sebastian Coe’s bid to become president of the International Olympic Committee has ended in defeat, with Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe winning the vote.
Coe, 68, had said occupying the Olympic Movement’s highest office was a role he had been “training for for the best part of his life”, but a majority of IOC members instead gave their backing to Coventry in the first round of voting.
The 41-year-old becomes the first woman and first African in the post.
Coventry’s victory at the IOC Session in Greece was announced by current president Thomas Bach, who will officially hand over the reins on June 24.
Victory for Coe would have been the peak of a stellar career in sports administration which followed great success in track and field, where he won Olympic gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games.
Coe led the bid and organising teams for the London 2012 Games and was the chairman of the British Olympic Association from 2012 to 2016. Since 2015 he has been president of World Athletics.
More recently, Coe chaired the Old Trafford Regeneration Task Force, which has recommended Manchester United build a new 100,000-seater stadium as part of a wider project to regenerate the surrounding area.
He sought to reform the IOC from within, stating earlier in his campaign that “too much power is in the hands of too few people”.
He had also vowed to protect the female sport category.
“If you do not protect it, or you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women’s sport,” Coe said when he launched his campaign last year.
“I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacrosanct.”
However, a majority of 49 out of the 97 IOC members eligible to vote selected Coventry to lead the organisation. She will now serve an eight-year term as president.
Coventry said in her acceptance speech: “This is an extraordinary moment. As a nine year old girl, I never thought that I would be standing up here one day getting to give back to this incredible movement of ours.
“This is not just a huge honour, but it is a reminder of my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organisation 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’ve taken today.”
Coventry, seen in some quarters as the preferred candidate of outgoing president Bach, won gold in the 200 metres backstroke at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, out of a total of seven medals she won overall.
She was elected to the IOC Athletes’ Commission and served from 2013 to 2021. She was then voted in as an individual IOC member in 2021.
Still no word from the IOC about the results of the single round of voting. The official regulations of the vote stipulated that “the full results of all the rounds of voting will be published as soon as the name of the new IOC President is announced” but that appears to have been a fib.
In her candidature document (available in English, French and Spanish here) Coventry listed five priorities: harnessing the power of sport; maximising collaboration and engagement; strengthening partnerships for mutual growth; championing sustainable development; and advancing credibility and trust. The document ends with a quote in large font, centred on an otherwise empty page: “I am because we are.” As she explains elsewhere:
My mission to drive empowerment, strengthen engagement, and ensure we remain relevant, is guided by the Ubuntu philosophy: ‘I am because we are.’ This principle highlights the combined strength of the Olympic community and our responsibility to uplift one another. It also underscores the close partnership we share with the International Paralympic Committee. Together, these events serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration, a symbol of human progress with limitless possibilities.
Perhaps it’s not quite that: the IOC’s YouTube channel is promising an interview with the new president-elect. Coventry will officially take over in June.
And that is very much and completely that. The day’s IOC-related activities are over and the IOC members have the rest of the day off. Action resumes, for IOC completists, at 7am GMT tomorrow.
Updated
Coventry gives a short acceptance speech:
This is not just a huge honour, but it is a reminder of my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organisation with so much pride, and I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision you’ve taken today. Thankyou from the bottom of my heart, and now we’ve got some work together. This race was an incredible race and it made us better, made us a stronger movement. Thankyou very much for this moment, and thankyou very much for this honour.
Updated
Kirsty Coventry becomes the first woman to hold the post of IOC president. She is a five-time Olympian, having competed in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, winning seven medals, two of them gold.
The new Olympic president is Kirsty Coventry!
In fact it’s not an envelope, it’s just a card with a name on it. Bach holds it up, and the name is Coventry’s!
Updated
Thomas Bach takes to the stage. He is carrying a large and rather showy envelope.
Something’s happening! I can tell because we’re no longer listening to bar lounge music, instead being treated to a dramatic slow-motion Olympic highlights package.
In 1980 Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose son is a candidate today and indeed was pre-match favourite, also won in the first round of voting. “The figures are not due to be disclosed,” we reported of the vote. “In the past they have either been burnt or flushed away – this time they are locked up.” This year we should at least get the numbers, though it might be worth someone checking the toilets because this is taking ages.
True fact: Samaranch’s journey towards IOC leadership started, inauspiciously, with his election as president of the Spanish Roller Skating Federation. Still, shamefully, not an Olympic sport.
Our report on the election of Jacques Rogge in 2001 makes it sound much more interesting than this. I quote:
The Belgian will have to act swiftly to pacify South Korea’s Kim Un-yong and Canada’s Dick Pound, who were both left feeling bitter after being overlooked for the most important job in world sport. “His first job will be to clear the blood off the carpet,” said one IOC member.
Sean Ingle is there for the Guardian today, and with any luck will sniff out some good juice. Or, better still, blood.
Thanks to the IOC I am currently liveblogging the broadcast of an album subtitled Finest Bar Lounge Music. A pox on all their houses. For what it’s worth, personally I think finer bar lounge music is available. They’ve just put that 12-year-old Francois Maugame album on shuffle. They’re on Tango del Espacio, aka track 13, now.
The next song on the IOC playlist is Love in Any Language, also by Francois Maugame, followed by the same composer’s Neon Dub. Spotify informs me that Maugame gets 502 monthly listeners, potentially all Lausanne-based (it would work out at about 0.7 listens per month for each IOC employee). There is a track on their 2013 album Like a Summer Breeze (Finest Bar Lounge Music) called Jazz for Lynchtime.
It seems British media are being shepherded to a spot where they will shortly speak to Sebastian Coe. This suggests, though we can’t be certain about anything at this point, that Coe has not been elected.
This is quite aggravating. I am upset. Also, the background music the IOC are currently broadcasting, which Shazam identifies as Like a Summer Breeze by Francois Maugame, seems to extensively plagiarise Morcheeba.
While we wait, here are some thrilling highlights of Thomas Bach’s election as IOC president in 2013.
I have to say this is a terrible blow for those, such as myself, who quite enjoy a mystifyingly drawn-out process and all the absurdity and hilarity they often involve.
But De Kepper isn’t going to tell us who the IOC’s new president is. Instead the IOC, in their infinite wisdom, are going to have a 30-minute break while, with cameras off, the new president is escorted out of the room, undergoes some kind of transformation, and is escorted back in again.
This is wildly against all predictions, which suggested a long and drawn-out voting process over several rounds.
New president to be decided after one round
It’s all done in round one! There is a new president!
Updated
We have a result! Before we hear it, we need to watch Christophe De Kepper, the IOC director general who is running this show, leaf through a lot of papers for a long time.
A woman is striding towards Thomas Bach carrying an envelope!
I’m not entirely sure what the hold-up is here. Voting has closed and nothing is happening. It is a boon, however, for fans of pan pipe music.
Everyone has voted, and the first round is declared closed. Dramatic music plays.
Peaceful music plays. It is interrupted when technical issues become apparent involving a couple of members’ keypads. Some people run around.
Voting open! Names of individual candidates have appeared on each member’s keypad. If a voter wishes to abstain, they are told not to make a selection. The question is: which of the candidates do you elect as president of the IOC.
In addition to the seven candidates a total of eight IOC members will not be allowed to vote in the first round. They are using an electronic voting process that involves some kind of smart card, which are currently being distributed.
It’s happening! I’m hoping that at some point this will become fun, but right now someone is reading some small print about voting procedure.
The session has not restarted. While we wait, here’s Sean Ingle’s scene-setter:
There is going to be a break now while the room is cleared, a security sweep takes place, and all mobile phones and internet-connected devices are handed in. The presidential vote will now start at 2.30pm GMT, aka in approximately 40 minutes.
Bach now gives a long speech about how amazing Italy’s Francesco Ricci Bitti is and always has been, and proposes his election as an honorary member of the IOC. Ricci Bitti is an excellent name, very nearly shared with a very fine biscuit.
In other IOC-related news before the cameras were turned on Tony Estanguet, former Olympian and president of the Paris 2024 organising committee, was elected as an IOC member, and Belgium’s Pierre-Olivier Beckers-Vieujant was elected an IOC vice-president.
Ban has been elected as an honorary member of the IOC. He gives a speech about his own “pride” and the “wisdom” of Bach.
The IOC is in session. It is starting with a speech from Thomas Bach about the contribution of Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean former secretary-general of the United Nations, who has chaired the IOC’s ethics commission since 2017 and is himself standing down.
Hello world!
It is a big day in the sporting boardroom and backstage hustling department, with Thomas Bach stepping down as president of the International Olympic Committee after 12 years (and taking on the new role of Honorary President for Life: “When I was elected as President 12 years ago, my first words were ‘ouf’, and it’s the same now,” he said in response) and thus forcing them to find someone to replace him. Today we find out who that person will be.
There are seven candidates. All of them have published lengthy candidature documents, translated into several languages, which you can find via their individual pages on the IOC website, or from here. They are also profiled more succinctly at insidethegames here. But in very brief, they are:
HRH Prince Feisal Al Hussein Jordanian royal, president of the Jordanian Olympic Committee, long-time IOC member and former commander in the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
David Lappartient French president of the UCI, world cycling’s governing body.
Johan Eliasch Swedish-born, British-based billionaire businessman (he officially represents Great Britain on the IOC). President of the FIS, governing body of skiing and snowboarding. Chair of the sports equipment company Head, and former deputy treasurer of the Conservative Party.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr Spanish son of the former IOC president of the same name.
Kirsty Coventry The only woman on the shortlist. Zimbabwean retired swimmer (she won Olympic gold in 2004 and 2008) and the country’s current minister of sport, arts and recreation.
Sebastian Coe British former athlete, former Conservative MP, life peer, president of the London 2012 Olympic organising committee, former president of the British Olympic Association and president of World Athletics since 2015, reelected for a third and final term in 2023.
Morinare Watanabe Japanese president of the FIG, the International Gymnastics Federation.
The rules of the game
This is pretty simple. At around 2pm GMT a secret ballot of all IOC members (there are currently 109 of them, including all seven candidates, though only 106 have turned up) will take place. Those standing for election, and their compatriots, are not allowed to vote until they or their compatriot are eliminated (though other associates of individual candidates are allowed to vote for them – controversially Samaranch’s family foundation is based in China and has two Chinese IOC members on the board). To be elected a candidate needs to win a simple majority of all votes cast. If nobody obtains a majority of the votes, whichever candidate has the fewest votes will be eliminated and a fresh round of voting will be held, and the process will be repeated until someone gets a majority.
If no candidate wins a majority the precise number of votes cast for each candidate in each round of voting will not immediately be made public, but if the two worst-performing candidates have the same number of votes there will be a head-to-head elimination vote-off, and if they also get the same number of votes in that the IOC president himself will decide which of them gets the boot. This is vanishingly unlikely but would be quite fun. As soon as someone is elected the full results of each round of voting will be published.
And that’s it. Strap yourselves in, let’s see what gets served up!
