The chairman of the International Olympic Committee was made in the Greek resort of Costa Navarino.
Zimbabwier Coventry will replace Thomas Bach this summer, who has spent the maximum time twelve years. The new chairman Coventry, double Olympic gold medalist, will sit for at least eight years.
97 of the 109 members of the IOC were present and an absolute majority of 50 percent were required and it became sensationally clear already after the first round. Coventry became the IOC’s tenth chairman since the formation of 1894, the first person from Africa to lead the organization.
Kirsty Coventry 49 – Johan Eliasch 2
She received exactly the 49 votes required to win in the first round. The Swedish-British candidate, FIS chairman Johan Eliasch, made failure and got only two votes
As a 41-year-old, she was by far the youngest among the candidates. As a 35-year-old, she became Minister in Zimbabwe with responsibility for youth sports. She places special emphasis on protecting female sports and supports a general ban on transgender people from competing in female Olympic sports.
There were seven candidates to vote for. Favorite for the vote was World Athletics chairman Lord Sebastian Coe.
The former Olympic gold medalist in Slalom Frida Hansdotter, the international table tennis association chairman Petra Sörling and Gunilla Lindberg were Swedes who voted.
So the votes were distributed:
Kirsty Coventry, 49
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., 28
Sebastian Coe, 8
David Lappartient, 4
Morinari Watanabe, 4
Prince Feisal Al Hussein, 2
Johan Eliasch, 2
See more: Kirsty Coventry – no trans women in the Olympics