View from Africa: how Kirsty Coventry will handle sport’s biggest job at the IOC

Incoming president owes her position to political support but is promising a collective and sustainable approach

The International Olympic Committee’s president-elect, Kirsty Coventry, did not initially have designs on a role in sports administration until she was thrust into it, essentially by politics.

On 7 September 2018, Coventry found out, along with the rest of Zimbabwe, that she had been appointed as the country’s minister for sports, art and recreation. She was the only white person on the 23-member cabinet, a unifier, albeit briefly, of a nation divided by racial schisms and labelled the “golden girl” by the then-deposed president Robert Mugabe. As an athlete who was also seen as a patriot, in a country where non-compliance has had serious ramifications, she could not refuse the position.

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