Kirsty Coventry: Becoming president of the IOC

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.

0:45It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:09Hello, I'm Mark Coles and for the documentary from the BBC World Service, I'm bringing you a special edition of my programme, Profile.

1:21Right, let's go curling. The Winter Olympics up and running, or rather skiing and skating Lots of sporty stuff on snow and ice over the next couple of weeks The US Vice President even bringing ice agents to the opening party Overseeing it all, lamenting what she calls political distractions Is the woman we're profiling, Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry Anything that is distracting from these games is sad, right? But what is keeping my faith alive is that when that opening ceremony happens and those athletes start competing, suddenly the world remembers magic and the spirit that the Games have. That's her, the new president of the International Olympic Committee, its first female, first African head in its 131-year history.

2:14At just 42 years old, its youngest as well. A former swimmer with seven Olympic medals to her name, Golden Girl, they call her back home in Harare. Coventry, the most decorated African Olympian ever and now the most powerful person in sport. This month's Winter Games in Italy, her first Olympics in charge. She's going to prioritise athletes for sure. I have no doubt she is going to be an extremely successful and remarkable president. She's the first female president. I really think that this was destiny, not just for her, but for the movement. She has raised Zimbabwe's flag high on the world stage again, and that it's good for Zimbabwe.

3:04She was born in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, in September 1983. A sporty family, her uncle was in the national swimming team, her parents, Robert and Lynn, teaching their daughter to swim, aged two. A natural from the word go, if this family video is anything to go by. Here's the sea and the top fish. The sea and the top fish. Loving the water. A close friend and the woman who helped coach her through four of her five Olympics, Kim Bracken. Her mom is a swimming instructor and they had a pool at their home that her mom would teach swimming lessons to people privately. and yeah, Kirstie grew up swimming right away.

3:46By six, she was already a member of a local swimming club. Kirstie is as light as a feather, so she floats, she's like a cork, she just floats on top of the water. A highly competitive child by all accounts. On fishing trips with her dad, she had refused to go home until she caught a bigger fish than he did. Prone to strop if she didn't come top, she confessed in an interview for olympics.com. I've been competitive since I was little. I was banned to play family card games because I hated to lose. And I just wasn't really much fun to be around when I lost. At nine, after watching the 1992 Barcelona Olympics on TV, she set her sights on the global stage.

4:28What's your ambition in Sweden? My ambition is one day to get to the Olympics. That inspired her as a nine-year-old and she said, I want to do that. Her classmates laughed. Some bullied her for being precocious. But she persevered, threw herself into training, and ended up being scouted by the athletics director at one of Zimbabwe's top schools, Harare's all-girl private Dominican convent high, which she attended from the age of 12. We had a swimming trial for the school team, and that was the first time we saw the talent that we now know is Kirsty Coventry. Fellow convent school swimmer and childhood friend Dawn Venturis.

5:08Well, she was very tall. She had a lot of blonde hair that also stood out. If you can imagine, we went to school in southern Africa and she was an exceptional swimmer.

5:23She was very fast. It seemed like she had lungs of steel. No stopping her, it seemed. It became very obvious to those of us around her that she was going to go somewhere. She was already representing her country from a young age and very quickly started participating in African Games, Commonwealth Games. Word started to spread. Kim Bracken was a swimming coach in the US at the time. And I got a phone call about this amazing young swimmer in Africa. So I flew over to Harare. I spent about 48 hours with her and her family. It was very obvious quickly that she was talented and focused and motivated.

6:07Just 16 and still at school, she qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She didn't win a medal, no one expected her to, but she did reach a semi-final, the first Zimbabwean swimmer ever to do so. The following year, it was off to America, an Olympic solidarity scholarship to study at Alabama's Auburn University, where Kim Bracken coached the Tigers' swimming team. And that was the beginning of it. It was a game-changer for me as a coach and for the team. Coventry proved hugely successful, helping the Tigers' team win three consecutive national championships. Though first time out in 2002, swimming alongside teammate and later Olympic medalist Margaret Holzer, her competitive nature got the better of her.

6:52Kirstie got second to Margaret in the 100 back, and she threw a temper tantrum. She was not happy. And as a coach, I appreciated that she was angry that she hadn't won because she's such a competitor. But as a coach, I was not happy that she wasn't cheering on her teammate. Like, we were trying to do something as a team. Bracken carried on coaching Coventry outside Auburn, was at her side in Athens for the 2004 Olympics, where she won a silver, a bronze, and went into her last event, the 200 metres backstroke, hoping against the odds to go one better. I didn't expect a gold medal. I don't even know that I expected any medals.

7:32I shouldn't say expected, but we just went in thinking, we're going to swim really fast. We raided the profile piggy bank, but sports rights being what they are, still can't afford to play you commentary of that race. 46p, a hair clip and a Waitrose charity box token and didn't really get as close. So here's Kirsty herself recalling the race on the BBC World Service Sporting Witness programme in 2017. Before they kind of set us off, I just remember taking a deep breath and the last maybe 15, 20 metres where I really started to hurt. But something within me just said, no, just keep pushing, get your hand on that wall.

8:14And she did it, got the gold. Moments later, Kirsty Coventry on the podium, watching the Zimbabwean flag being raised for the first time in 24 years, then back home to a hero's welcome. So many people at the airport to greet her, the plane couldn't get to its gate to let the passengers disembark. People were just ecstatic. People were naming their children not just Kirstie, but Backstroke, an individual medley, Lane 4. Like, that's how much pride they took in this moment. It was incredible. The BBC's Zimbabwe reporter Shingai Nyoka. Zimbabwe was really the butt of jokes because we were always at the bottom of the table with no medals at all.

9:02And so when she won those three medals, you know, that really was a turning point for the country in terms of its image in sports. She broke a first of several world records in 2005. In Beijing, at the 2008 Olympics, there was more success. When she won a further four medals, that really kind of cemented Zimbabwe's reputation, even if it was only just one person. I read somewhere that former President Mugabe even gave her a suitcase of cash after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It meant such a big deal then. It really was a big deal. I think he gave her 100 ,000 US dollars. And at the time, in 2008, cash was scarce, whether it was local currency and foreign currency.

9:46And so there was some criticism. But when she accepted it, she donated it to charity. Coventry's achievements managing to bring a bitterly divided nation together. Zimbabwe was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Under the presidency of Robert Mugabe, it was going through political and social upheaval. And the dominant narrative was really around the takeover of white-owned farms. There was a lot of violence. There was a lot of rhetoric around identity, who was Zimbabwean and who was not. And so what Herwin did was it broke down some of those racial barriers and the racial stereotypes here in Zimbabwe.

10:24You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

10:54The Bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection. where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to put all the issues on the table that keep me up at night. The interview brings you conversations with the people shaping our world.

11:41From global leaders... I've much more than fulfilled the promises that I've made. ...to cultural icons. I'm just interested in how it feels to be playing songs that are 50-odd years old. Songs are like children. They're with you forever. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

12:05This is Profile, taking a look into the life of Kirsty Coventry. After the World Championships in 2009, she decided to take a break, took a year off, went to live in South Africa, spending time with family and friends, and met her future husband, the sports administrator Tyrone Seward, who became her manager. The pair getting engaged during the 2012 London Olympics. He has been probably her biggest rock. He's just so supportive of her. The run-up to the London Games proved a nightmare for Coventry. Four months before the start, she suffered a serious injury. Coach Kim Bracken with her when it happened.

12:43It was horrible. She dislocated her knee. She has these super hyper-mobile knees. And I was there. We were on the indoor track and she was doing some running exercises and she just went down and was just screaming in pain. It was the saddest and scariest moment. I mean, it really affected her training. And then she got pneumonia. Blimey. Somehow, with just three weeks to go, she got herself fit enough to compete, but this time finished outside the medals, sixth in both of her events. Frustrated, she semi-retired, became an athlete's rep, elected to the IOC's All Powerful Athletes Commission, which she later went on to chair.

13:21She got married, started a family. The couple now have two young daughters, founded her own sporting academy, teaching young Zimbabwean children to swim. She competed one last time at the 2016 Games in Rio, then retired proper, going into sports administration, joining the IOC's executive board in 2018. She really prepared herself to be extremely successful within the IOC. You know, getting on committees, creating relationships, Filipino sports official and actress Michaela Kowanko-Jewerski became an IOC member at the same time. You can call me Mikey. It's so much easier. Kirstie prefers that too.

14:02Thanks. You can call me Markie if you want. Mikey and Kirstie hitting it off instantly. When we had our induction for new IOC members, I got into the car that was picking me up from the airport and she was sitting in the car. and it's like, hi, hi. Okay, that hi lasted, I don't know, an hour of nonstop talking. And we've just been friends ever since. The pair are often hanging out together. Sometimes during downtime, we would jump in the pool and I made this huge mistake of, well, joining in when she and her husband said, ready, set, go, and they were going to race against each other. And I was just like, they were already done on the other end of the pool.

14:54And I wasn't even, I think, a quarter of the way there. So I was just like, yep, I decided not to try anymore. And we were, yeah, we couldn't breathe anymore from laughing so hard. Lots of laughter, but Coventry was deadly serious about her IOC work, telling her coach Kim Bracken back in 2016. She said, I want to be the first female president of the IOC. And that one I was like, you know, OK, whatever. I don't know that I totally, I believe she could do it, but that's a really big one. Like these audacious goals, right? I mean, someone's got to be the first female IOC president. Why not me? First, though, she got involved in Zimbabwean politics, appointed her country's sports minister in 2018, by Robert Mugabe's successor, the controversial President Emerson Manangagwa, a man whose political ruthlessness and questionable human rights record earned him the nickname The Crocodile.

15:54The BBC's Shingai Nyoka. I think there was a lot of surprise when she was appointed, but very quickly there was criticism against not just her but the whole government and against Kirsty Coventry for aligning herself with and choosing to remain in a government that routinely arrested opposition members and critics and a government which also brutally cracked down and killed people protesting against the cost of living. Her response to the criticism was to insist you had to be prepared to sit at the table in order to get things done. She did push through legislation to crack down on match-fixing and sexual harassment in sport, but her tenure was dogged by controversy, especially when it came to football.

16:37The Guardian's chief sports reporter, Sean Ingle, who's in Milan covering the Winter Olympics. They were banned from hosting national games by the African Football Federation in 2020. She promised to rectify the situation but didn't. In 2022, FIFA suspended the Zimbabwe Football Association for government interference, so that was under her watch. I think she was asked about those things at the time and she sort of said, look, I dealt with them as best as I could. The golden girl starting to lose some of her shine, says Shingai Njoka. It absolutely dented her image. She attracted a lot of criticism.

17:13Then, in 2025, she threw her hat in the ring to become IOC president, one of eight candidates to replace the outgoing Thomas Bach. Kirsty Coventry, his preferred choice apparently, winning outright in the first round. Dear friends and colleagues, the 144th IOC session has elected as the 10th president of the International Olympic Committee Mrs Kirsty Coventry.

17:43Former school pal Dawn Venturus in Athens to watch the vote with her 85-year-old father. As we heard it and we hear her name being announced, I have never seen my father so happy about anything, but it was what it meant for the place that he grew up in, the place I grew up in, and for the future. Everybody was very excited and very overjoyed. Not surprisingly, Harare went bananas. The BBC's Shingai Nyoka. It wasn't just a celebration in Zimbabwe, it was a celebration in the global south, so to speak, because there haven't been a lot of young African women in those positions. And so I think people thought that she has raised Zimbabwe's flag high on the world stage again, and that it's good for Zimbabwe.

18:30There were some doubters and sceptics. Kirsty Coventry too young, they said. Her ascent to the top too rapid. No real experience of business or global corporations. Sean Ingle again. I think the original scepticism was essentially people thought that she would be Thomas Bach's puppet. In effect, we would have continuity, Bach, and she really would almost be taking soundings from him. In reality, I don't think that's happening, and she's very much her own woman. I think people have underestimated her. Being much more independent than many thought she'd be, he says. I think the first thing she's done is essentially do an audit of the IOC.

19:12Let's look at our finances, let's look at the thorny issue of transgender participation in sports and let's come up with a series of policies. And you may just think, well, that's what any good president would do. But under Thomas Bach, it was very much top down, you know, what Bach said went. So it's much more consensual, much more involving other members. Former school friend Dawn Venturas, now head coach of the Saudi men's Paralympic swimming team, thinks Coventry is bringing a new energy and focus to the Olympic movement. What we have to understand is that she is primarily an athlete. She represents the athlete and she, because of her age, is very much more in touch with what the athletes are looking for, what they need.

19:58and I think that athletes deserve more of a voice. It's their bodies that are put on the line and she understands and represents that because she's been to five Olympic Games herself. The immediate challenge for her, of course, is the Winter Games, making sure it's successful, announcing, as they always seem to do at the end, that it's been the best Games ever. After that come the longer-term issues, geopolitical and environmental ones, which events to keep, which to lose. Cut curling and I'm off. Her intray already bulging, says The Guardian's Sean Ingle. There's also environmental challenges.

20:34We look at global warming and whatever else. There are fewer and fewer places that could host winter games. And also, I guess, the cost and whatever else of running Olympics is going up. And at the moment, there's this big discussion of when Russia will come back into the fold. And I think it will happen at some point. So there's lots of different issues, lots of challenges. But I think her mindset has certainly impressed people so far. Her former coach, Kim Bracken, travelled to Milan for the Winter Games opening ceremony on Friday, hoping to give her friend a special gift she'd made to mark her first Olympics in charge.

21:07I learned how to crochet in October, and I've been making a few things, and so I've crocheted her wrist warmers. Nice. And, I don't know, hopefully she wears them at some point in her career as the IOC president. Kirsty Coventry having already made her mark as an Olympic athlete, now with the chance to shape the Olympic movement's future. You've been listening to Profile for the documentary from the BBC World Service. For more, just search Profile wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S.

21:57President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.