PARIS
\nFirst impressions can be deceptive but Kirsty Coventry showed that behind a sunny disposition she will have the mettle to deal with the trickiest of people and situations when she succeeds Thomas Bach as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Monday.
\nLooming large on the horizon of the 41-year-old Zimbabwean \u2014 the first woman and African to occupy the post of the most powerful single figure in sport \u2014 is US President Donald Trump. With Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Olympics, Trump will feature often on Coventry\u2019s agenda.
\nTrump has not been shy in giving public dressing downs to world leaders \u2014 notably Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa.
\nJudging by Coventry\u2019s initial response, after a crushing first-round victory in the presidential election in March, she may have Trump\u2019s measure.\u201d
\nI have been dealing with, let\u2019s say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old,\u201d she said, adding \u201ccommunication will be key.\u201d Unlike Trump, though, Coventry embraces the word failure, for it helped forge her stellar career.
\n\u201cEverything\u2019s scary. Embrace that. You have to fail,\u201d Coventry told the swimming team at her American alma mater Auburn University last year.\u201dI\u2019ve learned the best lessons by failing, and I have failed at many things. Life has a really good way of humbling you.\u201d At the same time that steely resolve comes to the surface when winning is at stake.
\nI was banned from playing card games with the family, because they didn\u2019t like to deal with me when I lost,\u201d she said.
\nA glance at Coventry\u2019s CV suggests failure in her life has been relative. Coventry, who had the Olympic rings tattooed on a leg after her first Games in 2000, is a two-time Olympic gold medallist and she has contributed seven of Zimbabwe\u2019s overall Games medals tally of eight.
\nShe has accrued domestic political experience, as she was Zimbabwe\u2019s Minister for Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation from 2019 to this year.That attracted some flak as she was serving in a government whose election in 2023 was declared to be \u201cneither free nor fair\u201d by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).\u201dI don\u2019t think you can stand on the sidelines and scream and shout for change,\u201d she said in her defence.
\n\u201cI believe you have to be seated at the table to try and create it.\u201dHer record as a minister has been heavily criticised by the Zimbabwean arts community in particular. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose predecessor Robert Mugabe labelled Coventry \u201ca golden girl\u201d and awarded her $100,000 after she came back with a gold medal from Beijing in 2008, hit back.\u201dWhoever was not impressed by her can appoint someone else when they become president,\u201d said the 82-year-old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS First impressions can be deceptive but Kirsty Coventry showed that behind a sunny disposition she will have the mettle to deal with the trickiest of people and situations when she succeeds Thomas Bach as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Monday. Looming large on the horizon of the 41-year-old Zimbabwean \u2014 the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":82678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82679,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82664\/revisions\/82679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}