Kirsty Coventry smashed through the International Olympic Committee\u2019s glass ceiling on Thursday to become the organization\u2019s first female and first African president in its 130-year history.
\nThe Zimbabwean swimming great, already a towering figure in Olympic circles, emerged victorious to replace Thomas Bach, securing the top job in world sport and ushering in a new era for the Games.
\nCoventry needed only one round of voting to clinch the race to succeed Bach, winning an immediate overall majority in the secret ballot with 49 of the available 97 votes, Reuters reported.
\nShe beat Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. into second place, the Spaniard winning 28 votes. Britain\u2019s Sebastian Coe, considered one of the front runners in the days leading up to the vote, came third with eight votes.
\nThe remaining votes went to Frenchman David Lappartient, Jordan\u2019s Prince Feisal, Swedish-born Johan Eliasch, and Japan\u2019s Morinari Watanabe.
\n“This is not just a huge honor but it is a reminder of my commitment to every single one of you that I will lead this organization with so much pride,” a beaming Coventry told her fellow IOC members at the luxury seaside resort in Greece\u2019s southwestern Peloponnese which hosted the IOC Session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kirsty Coventry smashed through the International Olympic Committee\u2019s glass ceiling on Thursday to become the organization\u2019s first female and first African president in its 130-year history. The Zimbabwean swimming great, already a towering figure in Olympic circles, emerged victorious to replace Thomas Bach, securing the top job in world sport and ushering in a new …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45059,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45058\/revisions\/45059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}