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Sent to Coventry: how Bach’s power helped Zimbabwean’s shock IOC win
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Race
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Mar 21, 2025 08:32pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Sean Ingle |
| News Date | Friday, March 21, 2025 07:45:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | It might sound beyond ridiculous, given the scale of Kirsty Coventry’s seismic victory in the International Olympic Committee presidential election. But as the various royals, sporting dignitaries, politicians and billionaires left the Costa Navarino resort on Friday, some really believed the result could have turned out very differently.
Yes, the 41-year-old Zimbabwean ex-swimmer had won in the first round with 49 votes to become the first woman to lead the IOC. And yes, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Sebastian Coe, the other members of the “Big Three”, had come away with just 28 and eight votes respectively. But in the postmortem there were several stories about how the IOC machine had powered Thomas Bach’s chosen successor over the line.
“We were hearing about phone calls telling members: ‘Don’t waste your vote, do the right thing’”, said one well-placed source. Another admitted: “The lobbying and strong-arming was intense.” There were even reports of at least one IOC member going up to Bach to voice their displeasure.
Some camps believe it changed the entire race. For months most candidates had their own internal trackers, which predicted who each IOC member would vote for round by round, as the lowest scoring candidate dropped out. And at the start of the week, several camps had similar numbers for the crucial first round of voting.
Samaranch, depending on who you spoke to, had either 24, 28 or 30 votes in the bag. Lord Coe’s ranged from as low as 20 and as high as 26. And while two camps had Coventry in the low or mid-20s, and another a fair bit higher, the consensus was that there was everything still to play for. |
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