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Kirsty Coventry’s Governance Record Suggests she’s a Perfect Fit for the Opaque IOC
Tainted by controversy, Coventry has been notable in her indifference to her job as minister, given the shambolic state of sport in Zimbabwe.
That Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has welcomed the selection of Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry as the ninth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says it all.
It was a selection since it was a secret ballot held among the IOC’s members, two-thirds of whom were personally appointed by the outgoing president Thomas Bach.
It hardly classifies as an open, transparent election.
Coventry “beat” Juan Antonio Samaranch Jnr into second place in the process, while Bach kept himself in the institutional mix as being “voted” as the honorary president on the same day as Coventry’s victory. As a measure of the committee, Samaranch’s father, once a minister in Generalissimo Franco’s fascist Spanish government, had presided over the largest bribery scandal in Olympic history in the selection of Salt Lake City to host the 2002 Winter Games. An ethics enquiry headed by US Senator George Mitchell found that “the IOC’s lack of accountability… directly contributed to the gift-giving culture”.
Coventry’s IOC “victory” has been lauded in some quarters as a success in that she represents two firsts by being both African and a woman. Closer examination of her governance record would suggest that she is the perfect person for the opaque IOC.
As an athlete, Coventry was unparalleled in Zimbabwean Olympic history, winning seven medals including two golds. In 2008, she accepted a $100,000 gift from then president Robert Mugabe for winning four medals at the Beijing Summer Games. That year the ruling Zanu-PF had overturned the election victory of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the aftermath being marked by violent repression and economic collapse.
The gift, given to her in a suitcase, then represented 125 times the annual average per capita income of Zimbabweans, the lowest point since 1960 in the country’s economic history.
Coventry, who became Zimbabwe’s sports minister in 2018, was roundly criticised in 2020 for accepting a farm which had been seized as part of Mugabe’s land redistribution programme. She has defended her close relationship with President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who seized power in a coup from Mugabe in 2017, by saying: “I don’t believe you can really create change if you don’t have a seat at the table.”
Yet she has been notable in her indifference to the job at hand. Zimbabwe has failed to play international football at home due to substandard infrastructure. In 2022, Fifa suspended the Zimbabwe Football Association for government interference, a ban that was only lifted after intervention by the players’ association.
As a top sportswoman one might have expected commensurate energy and the promotion of grassroots sport, but this has not happened. She even allowed swimming infrastructure to lapse, including the Olympic-standard facilities at the Chitungwiza Aquatic Complex outside Harare.
Given the deplorable and shambolic state of sport in Zimbabwe, Coventry is regarded by many as the worst sports minister since independence.
Of her rivals for IOC president, the best qualified seemed to be Sebastian Coe, the former middle-distance champion who brilliantly administered the London Olympics in 2012 and World Athletics. But Coe only won eight of the 97 votes cast by the IOC tribe of royals, heads of state, former athletes and famous figures, to Coventry’s 49 in her first-round win.
While Lord Coe was the reform candidate, as the Guardian has written, he “was snubbed, and with good reason: he might have changed things”. His hopes sank while others floated to the surface.
Outgoing president Bach said he was, surprise surprise, “very much relieved” to see the result of the vote cast at a five-star resort close to the Greek spiritual home of Olympia, calling it “a demonstration of the IOC as a global organisation with the highest good governance standards”.
Ja, well, no, fine.
With an agenda including what to do with transgender athletes, institutionalised drug-taking and the looming question about whether to allow Russia and Belarus to participate again, Coventry has said that she will, hold your breath, “set up a task force where this task force tries to set out some policies and some guiding frameworks that we as the movement can make decisions when we are brought into conflicts”. Perhaps this will be followed by a study group, think tank and high-level commission.
Even so, the answer is already abundantly clear.
Putin’s sports minister, Mikhail Degtyarev, has said that Moscow would press for reinstatement. “We are waiting, in this era of a new leader, for the Olympic movement to become stronger, more independent and more prosperous and that Russia will return to the Olympic podium,” he wrote.
Putin said about Coventry’s selection as president that her “unique experience” would ensure the movement’s advancement. In a message posted on the Kremlin website, he said the outcome of the selection “clearly testifies to your great authority in the sporting world”.
Coventry has already said that she is against banning countries from Olympics over wars and revealed plans for talks on Russia’s return: “I believe that it’s best for our movement to ensure that we have all athletes represented.”
That’s about as much a surprise as her selection.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Maverick
