Online Reporter
SWIMMING icon Kirsty Coventry says she sees no problem in being a candidate to become the most powerful person in sport despite being a minister in the Zimbabwean Government.
She currently serves as the Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture, having been first appointed by President Mnangagwa in 2019 and reappointed in 2023.
Coventry, Africa’s most-decorated Olympian, is aiming to become the first woman to head the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
She won seven Olympic swimming medals for Zimbabwe in the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games.
Now Coventry says she aims to “challenge the status quo” when she runs against six other candidates in March to succeed current IOC president Thomas Bach.
British Olympic legend, Sir Sebastian Coe, is also a candidate.
Coe is also currently head of World Athletics.
If Coventry succeeds, she will not only become the first woman to hold the post but also the first African to land the office.
The two-time Olympic gold medallist is one of seven candidates bidding to succeed Bach as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and if successful, she would break the glass ceiling of being both the first woman and first African to be elected.
At 41 she would also be the youngest ever president.
Coventry, though, says being part of the Zimbabwean Government has permitted her to reform from within.
She said she would be at ease if she were elected and had to take a tough line with other governments and federations.
“I have learned so many things from stepping into this ministry role. I have taken it upon myself to change a lot of policies within my country and how things are done,” she said.
“I think every country has its challenges and issues.
“Looking specifically at Zimbabwe, the 2023 election was the first time in over 20 or 30 years where there was no violence.
“That’s a step in the right direction.”
Coventry says it would be a “huge thing” for the African continent if she is elected and would show the IOC is “truly a global organisation”.
“For Africa, it would open up, I think, many opportunities for different leadership roles to say, Right, as Africa, we’re ready,” she said.
“We’re ready to lead. We’re capable of leading. We have the support. Let’s go. Let’s do it.”
Coventry is dismissive of the claim that there are rumblings among IOC members about how “African” she is, because she is white.
“They haven’t spoken to me about it,” she said.
“This was a question that I had when I won my medals in 2004 and Zimbabwe was going through a lot of turmoil.
“I was asked by someone in the media, do you think the country will be happy that a white Zimbabwean won their first medal in 24 years?
“I, to be honest, was completely shocked because for me, I just see myself as a Zimbabwean.
“I was born there. My mother was born there. My grandmother was born there.”
She has even adopted as her IOC campaign slogan ‘Ubuntu,’ which is an African philosophy: “It is about essentially I am because we are.”
“I am because we are really the basis of my manifesto,” she said.
“I want this to be collaborative.”
Her ministerial role has allowed her to travel extensively, most recently to Davos for the World Economic Forum and the United Nations General Assembly last year.
The atmosphere there impressed upon her the importance of the IOC and its values of neutrality and uniting people.
“It was really depressing,” she said. “It was so divisive. You can see heads of state who, generally, the world would turn to unify all of us, were choosing to just focus on inward-looking and not outward.
“I think we have a really unique opportunity as the Olympic world, as the sporting world, to showcase how humanity can be and how we can respect each other’s differences.”
Coventry, who says her main reason for running was “because the Olympic Games changed my life,” believes becoming the first woman president would build on all the work already done by the IOC on gender equality.
“That, for me, would be the best way to continue pushing gender equality into coaches and into our sports administrators,” she said.
“But I also want to be the best person.
“With my experience being an athlete, with navigating sensitive politics in Zimbabwe, by coming from a global South (hemisphere) country, but studying in the US and being there long term, having both views.
“For me, that is just as important.”
Coventry also believes the IOC needs to have “a very deep conversation” about the future of its TOP sponsorship programme in order to remain financially sustainable.
The IOC recorded revenue of US$7.6 billion for the cycle ending with the 2021 Tokyo Games, with TOP contributing about 30 percent, which made the programme the organisation’s second biggest source of income.
However, Bridgestone, Panasonic, and Toyota all opted not to renew their top-tier partnerships after 2024, cutting the TOP programme to 11 companies.
“I think there has to be a way in which we can relook and revisit the TOPs,” Coventry said in response to a question from SportsPro.
“One of the first things I’d like to do is bring all the TOP sponsors together and have a bit of a think tank to really understand their expectations.
“(Having been) an athlete and having received some sponsorship after I won my medals, I know what sponsors are wanting. They’re wanting something on a daily basis; they’re wanting that connection point.
“So we are going to have to find and come up with these different connection points, not just every two years.”
She ruled out prominent branding on “the field of play” but said she was open to having “different discussions,” including on financial distribution from TOP.
“If we can reach more and more people, especially in the global south and in under-represented areas, how is that going to open up opportunities for our existing sponsors or others?
“We need to look at how we’re going to do that and how we’re potentially going to do that collectively.
“Not just from the IOC, but thinking about how the IOC makes a decision on the TOP, how’s that going to impact an international federation, and how’s that going to impact an OCOG (Organising Committee for the Olympic Games)?
“Is there a way we can do it where it’s all coming through us and then it gets split even more? And what does that look like?
“In today’s world, we are expected to do more and more with less. In order to deliver an extraordinary Olympic Games, we’re going to have to have a very deep conversation about our TOPs and what it’s going to look like for us to be sustainable for the future.”
As part of this, she plans to “embrace” streaming and artificial intelligence (AI) in order for the IOC to “remain relevant.”
As the only woman in the IOC presidential picture, Coventry also said protecting female sport “is paramount” and added that she would sit down with International Federations (IFs) to collectively come up with “a very clear policy” on how that would be implemented.
She confirmed she would favour a gender policy similar to what has been adopted by the global governing bodies for athletics and swimming. — AFP/Sports Reporter.
