Congratulations to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the surprise election of its new president, Kirsty Coventry, confirming its status as one of the few electorates on Earth never to have had a change election. Another one is Fifa, with those two organisations’ eternal contest to be the worst-run governing body remaining easily the hardest-fought rivalry in world sport.
Yes, the IOC has been in its 144th special session to elect a new leader. Don’t worry – it hasn’t been all hard beds, spartan canteens and bad lighting, as is inflicted on the poor old cardinals in Conclave. The three-day event inevitably took place at a five-star luxury Greek resort.
Much can and is being made of Coventry being the first woman and the first African to win the role with 49 votes, while much less, as usual, will be made of the opaque backroom politics that saw her blow rival candidates including the World Athletics president, Seb Coe, out of the water, with voting unexpectedly not even having had to proceed to multiple rounds. Coe finished third with only eight votes, a full 20 behind the second-placed Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. Quick primer: Juan’s the son of Juan Antonio Samaranch, himself a former IOC president, whose final act in the top job was to elevate his son to the committee. Very sporting. Juan Sr came via an impeccable IOC pedigree, of course, having previously served as a sports administrator under an actual fascist regime – in his case, that of General Franco in Spain. His tenure is notable for probably the worst corruption scandal in Olympic history. Or rather, let’s face it, the worst that we know about.
So close, Juan Jr! Alas, the IOC presidency going semi-hereditary might have been a bad look too far for the outgoing president, Thomas Bach. Either way, for whatever reason, Coventry’s candidacy was reportedly pushed hard in the very final stages by Bach and various other top IOC bigwigs. Bach has personally appointed more than two-thirds of the electorate, and was voted in as the still-powerful honorary president on the same day as Coventry’s victory. As the Olympic motto famously runs: citius, altius, status quo.
Needless to say, Bach wasn’t a fan of Coe’s criticism of the secretive election process. “There is a good democratic rule, when you don’t win,” he said. “Don’t blame the voters and don’t blame the procedure.” Hmm. Not sure quite how pristine a democracy a meticulously assembled band of royals, international businesspeople, politicians and select former athletes is, particularly the ones flown in from autocracies. But look, I hope they enjoyed this election, and at some point might even consider the idea of having free and fair ones in their own countries.
Zimbabwe, where Coventry is a sports minister, might be a case in point, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s 2023 election victory characterised by brutal suppression of civil and political rights. Asked during her campaign how she could square her close ties with him, with even Fifa having banned Zimbabwe from international fixtures over government interference in the national game, Coventry explained: “It gets criticised, and that’s OK, because at the end of the day, I don’t think you can stand on the sidelines and scream for change. I believe you have to be seated at the table.”
In fact, that might have been the most opinion-adjacent opinion she voiced during the entire election, where her answers tended toward the radioactively inoffensive. Asked, for instance, how she’d bring something new, she replied: “Just the fact that I am running is a huge achievement. Now, we’ll see how the next few days unfold, but I’m looking forward to what comes next.”
Plenty more of that, which makes her pledge to protect the female category in sport with “a bit more of a leading role” one to watch. Pushed on this headline issue in the wake of her victory, Coventry explained: “We’re going to create a taskforce that’s going to look at the transgender issue and the protection of the female category.” What do we want? Taskforces to be created! When do want them? In due course!
Part of the IOC’s trouble with Coe, who ran on a platform stating that the IOC should ban transgender athletes in the female category in the interests of sporting fairness, is that he does things. His time at the helm of World Athletics saw him found a fully independent anti-doping and sporting integrity unit, rule decisively on the protection of the female category, and ban Russian athletes – the latter being something that seems to have earned him the permanent enmity of Bach. What’s a little light land invasion between friends – especially rich despotic friends? Remember: the IOC and Fifa need autocracies, with the massive financial outlay that any modern sporting mega event requires really only making sense politically for corrupt and autocratic regimes that wish to make a certain statement to the wider world. It’s why they’re having the next summer Olympics in the US. I’m joking, I’m joking.
Still, Coe’s decisive loss yet again confirms of the IOC that you can’t win as an outsider in an insider’s race. It’s not that he’s an unknown quantity, more that he’s a known quantity. They certainly can’t be risking a new broom, after all, just as they couldn’t risk looking too hard into a quite staggering array of vote-buying/bribery/corruption/doping/political/sportwashing scandals down the decades. Once you realise that the one thing sport’s biggest wigs really hate is a sporting chance, it all becomes so much easier to understand.