The incoming IOC president has revealed to Sky News she is against banning countries from the Olympics over wars and will open talks on Russia’s potential return to the Games.
Only Russians competing as neutrals were allowed to take part in Paris 2024 as Moscow was punished for launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kirsty Coventry will be the first female president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its first African leader.
The former Olympic swimmer, who won two gold medals for Zimbabwe, has said she sees inconsistencies in the current approach of singling out Russia while there are conflicts on her own continent.
Asked a day after her election if she was against banning countries from the Olympics over conflicts, Ms Coventry told Sky News: “I am, but I think you have to take each situation into account.
“What I would like to do is set up a taskforce where this taskforce tries to set out some policies and some guiding frameworks that we as the movement can use to make decisions when we are brought into conflicts.
“We have conflicts in Africa and they’re horrific at the moment. So this is not going away, sadly.
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“So how are we going to protect and support athletes?
“How are we going to ensure that all athletes have the opportunity to come to the Olympic Games?
“And our responsibility is also to ensure once those athletes are all there, that they’re safe and that we protect and support them during the Olympic Games.
“So there’s a fine balance. But ultimately I believe that it’s best for our movement to ensure that we have all athletes represented.”
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Analysis:
New IOC president will have to deal with Trump, Putin and transgender issue
US President Donald Trump has also apparently discussed with Russian leader Vladimir Putin the idea of using sports to heal relations with Russia.
While the next Summer Olympics are not until 2028 in Los Angeles, there are fewer than 11 months until the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
So will Russia be back by then?
“We’re going to have that discussion with a collective group …with the taskforce,” she said.
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Gender eligibility
This interview was taking place a day after her election to the highest job in sport – seeing off six rivals, including Sebastian Coe.
World Athletics – led by Lord Coe – has been exploring whether to introduce swab tests to assess gender eligibility.
A key athletics meeting next week is due to discuss the issue amid concerns about fairness over athletes with differences of sex development and transgender women competing in women’s sport.
The IOC has previously called a return to sex testing a “bad idea”, but Ms Coventry is not ruling it out as she has talked about protecting the female category.
“This is a conversation that’s happened and the international federations have taken a far greater lead in this conversation,” she said.
“What I was proposing is to bring a group together with the international federations and really understand each sport is slightly different.
“We know in equestrian, sex is really not an issue, but in other sports it is.
“So what I’d like to do again is bring the international federations together and sit down and try and come up with a collective way forward for all of us to move.”
Future Olympic hosts
Looking ahead there are the 2036 Olympics to be awarded.
And Ms Coventry pledged IOC members will get more of a say after behind-the-scenes deals under Thomas Bach seeing Paris (2024), LA (2028) and Brisbane (2034) uncontested decisions.
The IOC presidential campaign has raised when Africa and the Middle East will host the Olympics for the first time, as well as potential interest from India to host the Games in 2036.
“There’s a few slight adjustments that I’d like to make in terms of involvement of the IOC members – that was something very clearly related to me in this campaign,” Ms Coventry said.
“But new regions and embracing new regions … will be a part of what I would like to see.
“I think if we can embrace new regions across the entire movement, it opens this up for so many different opportunities, including revenue growth, including being able to reach new audiences.”
Zimbabwe rights concerns
There has been scrutiny over Ms Coventry’s role in Zimbabwe’s government as sports minister given concerns – raised by the UK government – about whether the country is violating human rights and clamping down on political freedoms.
“I have always been a very proud Zimbabwean and when I was asked to step into this role (as a minister in 2018), I took time to really consider it,” she said.
“I knew that it would come with different thoughts and feelings, but I wanted to try and create change in my country. I wanted to try and make things better for athletes in my country and we’re doing that.
“We’re working on strengthening pieces of legislation that have never been there before. And these are things that I don’t believe I would have been able to achieve on the outside.”
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IOC agenda
Ms Coventry officially starts in June as the first female IOC president.
“It shows that we are moving and we’re changing and we’re global and we’re diverse and we represent everybody,” she said.
And how will her presidency be judged a success? The rules allow her to serve until 2037 if she is re-elected for a final four-year term after being given an initial eight-year mandate.
She said: “I want to ensure that we can find these young, talented athletes from around the world and we can give them an opportunity to be identified and to have training and be connected to the best coaches in the world and that’s all going to be driven by embracing technology.
“And I think that is going to be really a game changer in the next few years.”
