Seven-time Olympic medallist Kirsty Coventry vowed to use the memories of her trials and tribulations as an aspiring athlete in Zimbabwe to improve the lot of up-and-coming youngsters if she were to be elected as the next president of the International Olympic Committee. (IOC).
Coventry's parents scrimped and saved to raise money, including selling cakes and hamburgers in the local community at weekends, to assist her training.
The Olympic Solidarity Scholarship stepped in to support the fledgling star. “That scholarship was hugely instrumental in just taking a bit of pressure off my family," Coventry recalled
"It gave me a little bit of income where I could travel to meetings and compete during the summertime when we weren’t in class or in school and it allowed me to pay for my coach to travel with me when we went to World Championships. And that's a huge advantage.”
The boost yielded glories galore. She won two golds, four silvers and a bronze swimming for her country between 2000 and 2016 to become the most decorated African in the 129-year history of the Olympic Games.
"The hardest part of my journey was becoming an Olympic champion," she told RFI on the eve of the vote to choose the planet's most powerful sports administrator.
"That's where I believe we should be focusing a little bit more with dedicated programmes to help support directly athletes on their journey to becoming an Olympian. So I would like to do that."
Sebastian Coe, a rival for the top job, created controversy just before the 2024 Games in Paris when he announced that track and field gold medallists would receive 47,000 euros from his organisation World Athletics.
French metal band Gojira wins Grammy for Olympics performance
It was the first time a sports federation had decided to pay prize money at an Olympics.
Coventry says she is against such incentives. "I'm not a believer of prize money," she added. "Again, looking at my own journey and also speaking to athletes around me, the hardest part of the journey is always before you become an Olympic champion or before you are well known.
"Once you're well known or once and you have won medals, a lot more opportunities open up for you. So the point is how can we help develop more athletes to try to become Olympic champions? or Olympic finalists? I believe that's the way we will be able to reach more athletes."
Athletes' voices
More personal experience from her eight years as chairperson of the IOC's athletes commission, she says, will inform her presidency.
"I also want to ensure that athletes' voices are always heard because that is how we can get to know what they expect of us.
"So through the athletes commission, we can make sure that the IOC is hearing exactly what athletes want from us, what they need from us, and how we can work in protecting and supporting them."
Coventry was still in her teens and a high school student when she swam in her first Olympics in Sydney in 2000.
Four years later at the Athens Games, she won gold in the 200m backstroke, silver in the 100m backstroke and bronze in the 200m individual medley.
In Beijing in 2008, she retained her backstroke title and claimed silver again in the 100m backstroke as well as silvers in the 200 and 400m individual medley.
Former skiing champion Grospiron takes on role as face of 2030 Winter Olympics
Competing for the top job
Though she took part in the 2012 Games in London and in Rio in 2016, she never recaptured her previous highs and retired in the wake of her exertions in Rio.
Nine years after stepping away from the white heat of competition in the pool, Coventry is aiming to make a splash at the Greek coastal resort of Costa Navarino as the first woman and the first African to lead the IOC since it was set up in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas.
"I want to be the best person, not just because of gender or because of where I come from," Coventry said. "I want the IOC members to feel that they can have confidence and trust in me, that I will be the best person to lead our incredible organisation, into the future that is changing ever so quickly."
Coventry, the youngest candidate in the field, will vie for the top job with the likes of Frenchman David Lappartient, who heads his country's national Olympic committee as well as the international cycling federation, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the son of the seventh president Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Morinari Watanabe, the head of the International Gymnastics Federation.
If the 109 IOC members were to choose her on Thursday, she will lead the organisation from the retirement of Thomas Bach on 23 June until 2033.
Lavish Paris Olympics river ceremony cost €100m, finance report reveals
The big question
The term will embrace the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032 as well as the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo in 2026 and the French Alps in 2030 which has come under fire from environmental campaigners in France.
After an opening ceremony along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, the ice sports, except for the speed skating, will be staged in the city.
Some 600km away to the north, La Clusaz and Le Grand-Bornand in the Haute-Savoie section will provide the venues for the cross country skiing and biathlon.
La Plagne, Courcheval and Méribel in the Savoie cluster will host inter alia the bobsleigh, luge and the alpine skiing. Serre Chevalier and Montgenèvre in the Briançon cluster will stage the freestyle skiing and snowboarding.
Lavish Paris Olympics river ceremony cost €100m, finance report reveals
Enthusiasts wanting to experience anything approaching the full gamut of the events at the extravaganza are destined to leave a chunky carbon footprint.
"This is a huge question," said Coventry. "I think that this also is going to come into play with the Summer Games with climate change as we see it around the world.
"We need to be very proactive about getting together all the Winter Olympics federations and other experts to really look at how we're going to deal with this and what is it that we are going to be willing to change about the Winter Olympic Games.
"I do believe that sooner rather than later, we are going to have to have the same conversation around the Summer Games, and I would rather be proactive about it than to have to wait and be in a situation where we are caught on the back foot and we we don't have any good solutions for identifying a way forward."
Adapted from an interview with Christophe Diremszian
