Sebastian Coe secures only eight votes as Kirsty Coventry elected IOC president

Sebastian Coe received just eight votes in his bid for the International Olympic Committee presidency as Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe became the first woman to secure sport’s highest office.

Multiple rounds of voting had been expected to be required at the IOC Session in Greece on Thursday, but 41-year-old Coventry secured the absolute majority necessary for victory in the very first round, gaining 49 of the votes from the 97 eligible IOC members.

Coe had stressed from the start of his campaign last year he would not be a “vanilla” candidate and built his manifesto around reform of an organisation he felt concentrated “too much power in the hands of too few people”.

He also pledged to protect the female category in Olympic sport, admitting the controversial women’s boxing tournament at last summer’s Paris Games left him feeling “uncomfortable”.

Coventry has questions to answer on how the IOC will tackle that issue under her leadership. She was part of the IOC executive board which approved the rules for the tournament where two fighters – Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting – won gold despite the International Boxing Association alleging they had been disqualified from the 2023 World Championships for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria.

Coventry said in January the IOC needed to “learn lessons” from that episode. Khelif is taking legal action over reports she has male XY chromosomes and insists she was born a woman and lives as a woman.

Coventry, who will become the IOC’s first African president as well as its first female candidate, had been thought throughout the campaign to be outgoing president Thomas Bach’s choice to succeed him, and may therefore be expected to be a continuity candidate.

“This is an extraordinary moment,” she said in her acceptance speech.

“As a nine-year-old girl, I never thought that I would be standing up here one day getting to give back to this incredible movement of ours.

“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, with the values at the core, and I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision that you’ve taken today.”

Coe saw the IOC’s top job as a role he had been “training for for the best part of his life”, with the Olympics central to his life since he first joined an athletics club aged 11. He went on to win Olympic gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Games.

Victory would have been the crowning glory of a stellar career in sports administration, having led the bidding and organising teams for the London 2012 Games, served as president of the British Olympic Association and reigned as World Athletics president since 2015. He had described entering the race to succeed Bach as “the dance he couldn’t sit out”.

Coe congratulated Coventry on her victory in a statement issued by World Athletics.

“As president of the number one Olympic sport, we look forward to working closely with Kirsty to ensure that sport remains the priority of the IOC, and athletes the driving force behind the new president’s agenda,” he said.