Background and career
Kirsty Leigh Coventry Seward (née Coventry; born 16 September 1983) is a Zimbabwean politician, sports administrator, and former competitive swimmer who is the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). She has served as the president of the IOC since 23 June 2025, and is the first woman, first Zimbabwean, and the first African to hold the office, while also only the second non-European president of the IOC, following Avery Brundage who left office in 1972.
Born in Harare, Coventry attended and swam competitively for Auburn University in Alabama, in the United States. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Coventry won three Olympic medals: a gold, a silver, and a bronze, and in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing she won four medals: a gold and three silver. She was subsequently described by Paul Chingoka, head of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee, as "our national treasure". In 2016, Coventry retired from swimming after her fifth Olympics, having won the joint-most individual medals in women's swimming in Olympic history and she is the most decorated African Olympian. She is a member of the IOC and was elected the Chairperson of the IOC Athletes' Commission, the body that represents all Olympic athletes worldwide, in early 2018.
Coventry has had a close relationship with the authoritarian government of Zimbabwe under successive dictators — first Robert Mugabe then, following the 2017 coup d'état, Emmerson Mnangagwa who appointed her to his cabinet as the minister overseeing sport. Mugabe had previously called her "a golden girl", and awarded her US$100,000 in cash for her 2008 Olympic performance. Her association with the regime led to her being described by some as "the Soft Face of Zimbabwe’s Dictatorship".
