KIRSTY COVENTRY BECOMES FIRST WOMAN AND FIRST AFRICAN TO LEAD INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Kirsty Coventry was elected as the new IOC president on Thursday

PYLOS, Greece - Kirsty Coventry was elected president of the International Olympic Committee on Thursday, becoming the first woman and first African to lead the world’s wealthiest multi-sport organization in its 130-year history.

The Zimbabwean needed only one round of voting to clinch the race to succeed Thomas Bach, winning an immediate overall majority in the secret ballot with 49 of the available 97 votes.

Coventry beat Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. into second place, the Spaniard winning 28 votes. Britain’s Sebastian Coe, considered one of the front runners in the days leading up to the vote, came third with eight vote.

"Coventry beat Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. into second place, the Spaniard winning 28 votes. Britain’s Sebastian Coe, considered one of the front runners in the days leading up to the vote, came third with eight votes.

The remaining votes went to Frenchman David Lappartient, Jordan’s Prince Feisal, Swedish-born Johan Eliasch, and Japan’s Morinari Watanabe.

"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," a beaming Coventry told her fellow IOC members at the luxury seaside resort in Greece’s southwestern Peloponnese which hosted the IOC Session.

"I will make all of you very, very proud, and hopefully extremely confident with the choice you've taken today, thank you from the bottom of my heart," she added.

Coventry said she now wants to bring all the candidates together.

"I'm going to sit down with President Bach. We're going to have a few months for a handover takeover. And what I want to focus on is bringing all the candidates together. There were so many good ideas and exchanges over the last six months.

"Look at the IOC and our Olympic movement and family and decide how exactly we're going to move forward in the future. What is it that we want to focus on in the first six months? I have some ideas, but a part of my campaign was listening to the IOC members and hearing what they have to say and hearing how we want to move together."

SHOW OF UNITY

Coventry's first-round landslide was a show of unity in the body, she said.

"It's extremely important we have to be a united front and we have to work together. We don't and we might not always agree, but we have to be able to come together for the betterment of the movement."

A seven-times Olympic medallist , Coventry won 200m backstroke gold at the 2004 Athens Games and again in Beijing four years later.

She was added to the IOC's Athletes’ Commission in 2012, and her election to the top job signals a new era for the IOC, with expectations that she will bring a fresh perspective to pressing issues such as athlete rights, the gender debate and the sustainability of the Games.

A champion of sport development in Africa, Coventry has pledged to expand Olympic participation and ensure the Games remain relevant to younger generations.

She also inherits the complex task of navigating relations with global sports federations and sponsors while maintaining the IOC’s financial stability, which has relied heavily on its multibillion-dollar broadcasting and sponsorship deals.

As she takes the helm, the global sporting community will be watching closely to see how Coventry shapes the future of the world’s biggest multi-sport organisation.

While her election was broadly popular among the IOC family, there was disquiet in some quarters over her links with the Zimbabwean government, for whom she serves as Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts, and Recreation, a position that has raised eyebrows given Zimbabwe's problematic history with political freedoms.

The country has faced sanctions from the United States and the European Union. Coventry's longstanding recognition in Zimbabwe, where she was given a $100,000 award by the former President Robert Mugabe for her success at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, adds further complexity to the situation. Mugabe was in power for 37 years before being overthrown in a military-backed coup in 2017.

Although Coventry has attempted to separate herself from political affairs, her ministerial role and ties with Zimbabwe's leadership continue to be contentious issues as she steps into the leadership of the world's most powerful sports organisation.

On Thursday, though, she was all smiles.

Champion in Athens 2004, victorious again in Pylos -- her golden touch in Greece shows no signs of fading.

"Greece seems to be my lucky charm," she smiled.

- Reuters, editing by Toby Davis and Ed Osmond

 

TRACK AND FIELD INTRODUCING PRIZE MONEY AT OLYMPICS WITH PARIS GOLD MEDALISTS TO GET $50,000

Sebastian Coe. AP Photo

 MONACO (AP) — Track and field is set to become the first sport to introduce prize money at the Olympics, with World Athletics saying Wednesday it would pay $50,000 to gold medalists in Paris.

The governing body of athletics said it was setting aside $2.4 million to pay the gold medalists across the 48 events on the track and field program for this year's Paris Olympics. Relay teams will split the $50,000 between their members. Payments for silver and bronze medalists are planned to start from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“While it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal, or on the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important we start somewhere and make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said in a statement.

The prize money will come out of the share of Olympic revenue that that the IOC distributes to World Athletics and other governing bodies of individual sports.

Athletes will have to pass “the usual anti-doping procedures” at the event before they receive the money, World Athletics added.

The modern Olympics originated as an amateur sports event and the International Olympic Committee does not award prize money. However, many medalists receive payments from their countries’ governments, national sports bodies or from sponsors.

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee awarded $37,500 to gold medalists at the last Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021. Singapore's National Olympic Council promises $1 million for Olympic gold, a feat only achieved once so far by a Singaporean competitor.

The move by World Athletics could be seen as an indicator of Coe’s intentions for the Olympics as a whole if he makes a run for the IOC presidency.

“I haven’t ruled it in, and I certainly haven’t ruled it out,” Coe said last year when asked whether he would consider running for the IOC’s top post when Thomas Bach’s term ends in 2025. The IOC typically disapproves of any public campaigning for the presidency.

COE TO HEAD MAN UNITED TASK FORCE AROUND NEW AND REBUILT OLD TRAFFORD

 

Reuters 

Manchester United do not plan to leave Old Trafford, the club confirmed on Friday, and have appointed Sebastian Coe as chair of a task force to study whether to renovate the 144-year-old stadium or build new on adjacent club-owned land.

The Old Trafford Regeneration Task Force comes on the heels of British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe's acquisition of a 27.7%stake in the club.

"This can be a major regeneration project for an area of Greater Manchester which has played such a key role in British industrial history, but which today requires new investment to thrive again," Ratcliffe said in a statement.

"The north-west of England has a greater concentration of major football clubs than anywhere else in the world, yet we don't have a stadium on the scale of Wembley, the Nou Camp or the Bernabeu.

"We will not be able to change that on our own, which is why this task force is so important to help us seize this once-in-a-century opportunity."

Ratcliffe's initial conclusion was that a new-build would be the best solution and the club's board is supportive of exploring this route.

Coe is the former chair of the 2012 London Olympics organising committee and current president of World Athletics.

Other members of the task force include Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, Sara Todd, Chief Executive of Trafford Council, and Gary Neville, former captain of Manchester United, among others.

United want to be equipped to handle international games and major finals plus provide a modernised home for the club, they said, but were keen to stay in the Old Trafford area to remain rooted to their historic home. Old Trafford opened in 1910 and last had renovations in 2006.

Ratcliffe committed 237 million pounds ($304.50 million) of his own money for improvement in infrastructure, though any project would cost considerably more and so the club will explore public-private partners.

"It is very encouraging to see the emphasis being put on fan consultation, and exciting to see the vision and ambition behind this project, not only to put Old Trafford back on among the world's leading football stadiums, but for it to form part of a wider regeneration," said task force member Duncan Drasdo, CEO of Manchester United Supporters Trust.

"Fans are the heartbeat of any football stadium.

($1 = 0.7783 pounds)

- Lori Ewing 

KENYA'S 🇰🇪 KELVIN KIPTUM: MARATHON WORLD RECORD HOLDER DIES IN ROAD CRASH

Getty

 The men's marathon world record holder, Kenya's Kelvin Kiptum, 24, has died in a road accident in his home country.

He was killed alongside his coach, Rwanda's Gervais Hakizimana, in a car on a road in western Kenya on Sunday.

Kiptum made a breakthrough in 2023 as a rival to compatriot Eliud Kipchoge - one of the greatest marathon runners.

And it was in Chicago last October that Kiptum bettered Kipchoge's achievement, clocking the 26.1 miles (42km) in two hours and 35 seconds.

The two athletes had been named in Kenya's provisional marathon team for the Paris Olympics later this year.

Paying tribute to Kiptum, Kenyan Sports Minister Ababu Namwamba wrote on X: "Devastatingly sickening!! Kenya has lost a special gem. Lost for words."

Kenya's opposition leader and former prime minister, Raila Odinga, said the country had lost "a true hero" and was mourning "a remarkable individual... and Kenyan athletics icon".

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, said Kiptum was "an incredible athlete leaving an incredible legacy, we will miss him dearly".

RUSSIA STILL BANNED, BUT 'THINGS CHANGE' SAYS COE

Reuters 

The Olympic door for Russian track and field athletes remains firmly shut, Sebastian Coe said on Monday, but he also offered them a glimmer of hope by acknowledging "the world changes" and highlighting a working group that is monitoring the situation.

Earlier this month the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said that Russians and Belarusians who qualify in their sport for the Paris 2024 Games can take part as neutrals without flags, emblems or anthems, changing the position of their original blanket ban following eeethe invasion of Ukraine.

That followed a recommendation in March that put the onus on international sports federations to decide, with most of them moving to allow the two countries' athletes to return.

Athletics, the Games' biggest and most popular sport, immediately responded by saying they would keep their ban in place, but Coe seemed less certain when speaking to journalists on Monday.

TUMBLING RECORDS LEAVE COA EXPECTING "BEST-EVER" WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Reuters 

Sebastian Coe says this record-laden athletics season has convinced him that next month's world championships could be the best of all time in terms of performance, and he is confident there will be big crowds in Budapest to witness the action.

Because of COVID, the sport is hosting back-to-back editions of the usually biennial world championships, with the Aug 19-27 event following last year's postponed worlds in Eugene, Oregon.

"You have to say that this has been the best start I can remember to any track and field season," World Athletics president Coe told reporters on Monday.