BREAKING: Seb Coe falls short as IOC votes for Kirsty Coventry to become next president

In a minor shock just one round of voting was required to elect Kirsty Coventry as the IOC’s 10th president and first female and African to be handed the biggest job in world sport

Kirsty Coventry has been named the International Olympic Committee’s first female and African president after securing the role in just one round of voting. Britain’s Sebastian Coe had been among the favourites to become the IOC’s 10th president only for Zimbabwean Coventry, 41, to land the so-called biggest job in sport.

There were seven candidates on the ballot but four had been discounted as having little chance long before the electronic votes were cast from the conference room of a luxury resort in Costa Navarino, Greece.

And while the secretive nature of the IOC always meant the chance of a shock, from the outset it appeared as if Coe, Coventry and Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr were the frontrunners and the election would require several rounds of voting.

Instead, in a shock development, it took just one round for Coventry – a former swimmer who competed at five Games – to accumulate more than 50 per cent of the required votes to win.

During a campaign weighed down by strict regulations, all seven hopefuls made similar pitches around protecting women’s sport and ensuring the Olympics can move with the times and remain sport’s biggest show.

Coe had won a host of big-name endorsements from Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and Manchester United (he has been part of the project to build a new Old Trafford) but the campaign was pockmarked by reminders that his decision to pay track and field champions in Paris last summer went down badly with many IOC delegates.

Coventry, meanwhile, was seen as the favoured candidate of outgoing Thomas Bach and upon accepting the nomination she said: “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, and I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision you’ve taken today.

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and now we’ve got some work together. This race was an incredible race and it made us better, made us a stronger movement. Thank you very much for this moment, and thank you very much for this honour.”

Samaranch Jr, the son of the seventh IOC president between 1980 and 2001, was the pre-vote favourite among insiders because he has served as a delegate for more than two decades and therefore had the best connections in the members’ club.

The new president faces a fraught period with finding a way to work alongside Donald Trump ahead of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles the biggest initial task of an eight-year team.

Finding satisfactory solutions to the transgender rules will be important too for Coventry but above all is the long-term health of the Olympic Games. Paris was a return to form after 12 years of financial and logistical issues post-London.

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