Kirsty Coventry was elected on Thursday as the 10th president of the International Olympic Committee, becoming the first woman and the first African to hold the most powerful role in sports.
Ms. Coventry, 41, from Zimbabwe, was the only woman among the seven candidates in the monthslong election battle and will be the committee’s youngest president since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, its co-founder in the late 19th century. As a swimmer, she holds seven of her country’s eight Olympic medals, including golds at the 2004 and 2008 Games.
The election, which has been described in similar language to a papal conclave, was settled — to gasps by onlookers — in the very first round of secret voting by the International Olympic Committee. Its membership is an eclectic group that features not only sports leaders but also royals, business moguls and even Hollywood stars.
With her decisive victory, Ms. Coventry vaults to the very top of global sports, into a position that requires diplomatic, financial and management acumen as well as sports knowledge. The I.O.C. president must manage an institution responsible for awarding and staging Games every two years that generate billions of dollars and are coveted by politicians around the world as they seek to bolster their own and their nation’s profiles.
“It’s a signal that we are truly global and that we have evolved into an organization that is truly open to diversity and we are going to continue walking that road in the next eight years,” said Ms. Coventry, who gave birth to her second child while campaigning for the post.
The role is not for the faint of heart.
The departing leader, Thomas Bach of Germany, a former gold medal-winning fencer, served a 12-year presidency marked by a series of crises: revelations that Russia had corrupted international sports for at least half a decade through a state-backed doping program, a revolt among some Western democracies over the cost of hosting the Olympics and a pandemic that upended the movement, forcing the Tokyo Olympics to be held without spectators a year later than scheduled.
Ms. Coventry has urgent issues to deal with right at the start. The next Summer Olympics will take place in Los Angeles in 2028, at a time when American leadership around the world is under scrutiny. There are also significant decisions to be made about the rights of transgender athletes as well as about the challenges posed by the climate crisis.
“The next president will have a different set of problems,” said Michael Payne, a former marketing director of the I.O.C., which, he added, is an “organization like no other.”
“It is a balancing act to be able to lead a global semi-governmental organization and at the same time run it as if you’re leading a Fortune 500 company because you have to make the business work.”
Asked about having to deal with President Trump in preparation for the Los Angeles Games, Ms. Coventry quipped that she had decades of experience of handling “difficult men in high positions.”
Ms. Coventry, who has been sports minister in the Zimbabwe government for seven years, a role that has sometimes drawn ugly scrutiny, said she would lean on the other candidates to discuss ways to move the I.O.C. forward. Her manifesto was perhaps the least revolutionary, short of policy ideas, but with a commitment to listen to members, who had complained about being sidelined under the powerful Mr. Bach.
“We might not always agree but we have to be able to come together for the benefit of the movement,” she said.
The election itself was hotly contested and featured a byzantine set of rules and regulations that the candidates chafed at and sometimes openly criticized. Access to voters during the election period was strictly controlled and there were even warnings over what to include in publicity materials, leading one member to use photographs generated by artificial intelligence after a restriction on the representation of any individuals other than the candidates themselves.
In the final days and hours before the vote, at a secluded luxury holiday resort in southern Greece, rumors of rule-breaking and paranoia gripped many of the campaign teams. That followed smear campaigns targeting some of the candidates — including Ms. Coventry — that had appeared online, and an anonymous complaint listing a range of potential election rule breaches that was sent anonymously to the I.O.C.’s ethics chief.
Many of the candidates chafed against the strict rules that enveloped the election, giving the vote an air of opacity and secrecy. The only gathering where candidates were able to pitch to the committee members was held behind closed doors in February, with members forced to turn in cellphones before entering. A strict 15-minute time limit was enforced and voters were barred from asking questions.
Still, for some members, those rules — and others — did not go far enough.
In this view, any form of campaigning should have been barred because, according to Syed Shahid Ali, a longtime delegate from Pakistan, the I.O.C. is more akin to “your old gentlemen’s club” than the top global sporting organization. “In normal club behavior you’re not allowed to do that,” Mr. Khan, an I.O.C. member for almost 30 years, said before the vote. “By doing this you are telling people we are not close enough, we don’t know each other enough.”
The largess on show in Greece illustrated the I.O.C.’s enormous wealth and the status its members enjoy. Golf carts ferried officials around the sprawling resort where rooms can cost more than $2,500 per night; recent guests have included the actor Bill Murray and the soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.
The power of the organization was also clear. The presence of the Olympic movement disrupted the filming of the director Christopher Nolan’s big-budget recreation of “The Odyssey,” taking place nearby, after local officials grounded a helicopter crew until the Olympic circus had left town.
During the vote, armed patrols, drones and sniffer dogs roamed the facility, while members were forced to hand over their cellphones before being allowed to enter the auditorium where the election was being held.
There, they faced even more rules. Members from countries represented by the candidates were not allowed to cast votes until their compatriot had been eliminated.
In the end it was over almost as soon as it had begun, with Mr. Bach and the I.O.C.’s top administrator, Christophe de Kepper, looking stunned when a scrutineer handed over the first-round results. “You have elected a new I.O.C. president,” a wide-eyed Mr. de Kepper said.
The victory was also immediately hailed as one for the outgoing Mr. Bach, who did much to ensure Ms. Coventry was considered a legitimate contender to replace him, working the phones and pressing members to pick the one candidate who had his backing. The voters listened, delivering Ms. Coventry the minimum 49 votes she required to secure a majority.
Mr. Bach had made clear what he thought was the best profile for the next president — “Olympic champion, non-European, different generation” — said one of her defeated rivals, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. Mr. Samaranch had been bidding to follow in the footsteps of his father, who transformed the Olympic movement in his two decades at its helm.
“The vast majority of I.O.C. members voted for Kirsty Coventry,” he said. “And that meant they had an idea they wanted a generational change, opening the I.O.C. to another continent, to another generation and to another gender.”
