IOC president-elect hails Beijing's Games legacy

Kirsty Coventry, president-elect of the International Olympic Committee

Citing Beijing's proven success in maximizing the Games legacy, the International Olympic Committee's president-elect Kirsty Coventry has called on future hosts to learn from China's best practices to promote sustainability.

With one of her proudest achievements as an athlete celebrated at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion swimmer who was elected the 10th IOC president on Thursday, has embraced her groundbreaking new role as the first female leader of the organization with a series of fresh ideas, including input from China, to implement during her tenure.

Among the many of her proposals to lead the Olympic Movement into a more sustainable and true global future, Coventry reiterated the importance of making the Games relevant and beneficial to local communities as she highlighted Beijing's expertise in hosting both the summer and winter editions.

"When you look at former hosts, I really don't know which other country has such high impact on legacy for their venues and for their sports. I've only really seen that kind of success from China," Coventry told China Daily via an online interview before the 144th IOC session at which she was elected.

Hailing from Zimbabwe, Coventry has also become the first African to lead the IOC, and the youngest, at 41, among seven candidates having bid to succeed outgoing President Thomas Bach, who will officially step down from arguably the most influential post in the international sports community after his second term expires in June.

Always a proud representative of her native continent, Coventry remembered vividly how excited she was after defending her Olympic gold in the 200-meter backstroke at Beijing 2008 to cement her status as one of Africa's most celebrated Olympians.

Yet, the experience of revisiting her triumphant pool at Beijing's National Aquatics Center for curling competitions at the 2022 Winter Olympics thrilled her even more.

"I was like 'What? My swimming pool has been turned into an ice rink!' That's so cool," Coventry said of the transformation of the center into an ice venue for the Winter Games.

"There are so many things that we, as the Olympic Movement, can learn from. And we can work with future hosts to say, 'look at China, how they did this'. This is what we want you thinking of when you're talking about legacy for your communities.

"Those are incredibly powerful things that we can learn from and that we can again use for future hosts to also benefit from.

"China's commitment to the Olympic values and principles and growing those values is second to none. You have done an incredible job," said Coventry, who retired after her fifth and final Games at Rio 2016 before being appointed Zimbabwe's sports minister two years later.

Acknowledging her vision of promoting equality and inclusiveness, the Chinese Olympic Committee congratulated Coventry right after she won the election by securing over half of the total 97 votes from IOC members on Thursday.

"We are confident for and looking forward to the stronger development of the international Olympic Movement under Coventry's leadership," Gao Zhidan, president of the COC, said in a congratulatory letter.

"The COC will further deepen the strategic partnership with the IOC, making greater contributions to the reform and evolution of the movement."

Coventry's rivals in the election, such as current IOC Vice-President Juan Antonio Samaranch and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, also voiced their support for her after the vote.

"We have a female athlete at the head of the organization. We had talked about this together a few weeks ago and we both agreed that this is really important and I'm very happy for her," said Coe, a two-time Olympic champion distance runner.

Despite the strong backing she has received, Coventry is confronted with a tall task to navigate the IOC through challenges brought by geopolitical tensions.

Yet, she has vowed to deal with these challenges by immediately establishing a "task force dedicated to better support and protect National Olympic Committees and their athletes from all these conflict areas".

"At the end of the day, we should ensure that we are remaining neutral to the best of our ability. And in order to have a stronger movement, we have to have a greater understanding of each other's culture," she stressed.