Olympic president Kirsty Coventry starts work with strong IOC and challenges for Los Angeles Games

Kirsty Coventry reacts after she was announced as the new IOC President at the International Olympic Committee 144th session in Costa Navarino, western Greece, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis), File)

GENEVA — The world Kirsty Coventry walks into Monday as the International Olympic Committee’s first female and first African president is already very different to the one she was elected in three months ago.

Take Los Angeles, host of the next Summer Games that is the public face and financial foundation of most Olympic sports.

The city described last week as a “trash heap” by U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to welcome teams from more than 200 nations in July 2028.

Most of the 11,000 athletes and thousands more coaches and officials who will take part in the LA Olympics will have seen images of military being deployed against the wishes of city and state leaders.

A growing number of those athletes’ home countries face being on a Trump-directed travel ban list — including Coventry’s home Zimbabwe — though Olympic participants are promised exemptions to come to the U.S. Several players from Senegal’s women’s basketball team were denied visas for a training trip to the U.S., the country’s prime minister said.

A first face-to-face meeting with Trump is a priority for the new IOC president, perhaps at a sports event.

Welcome to Olympic diplomacy, the outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach could reasonably comment to his political protégé Coventry.

The six Olympic Games of Bach’s 12 years were rocked by Russian doping scandals and military aggression, Korean nuclear tensions, a global health crisis and corruption-fueled Brazilian chaos.

Still, Coventry inherits an IOC with a solid reputation and finances after a widely praised 2024 Paris Olympics, plus a slate of summer and winter hosts for the next decade. Risks and challenges ahead are clear to see.

New leadership style

For the two-time Olympic champion swimmer’s first full day as president Tuesday she has invited the 109-strong IOC membership to closed-doors meetings about its future under the banner “Pause and Reflect.”

“The way in which I like to lead is with collaboration,” said Coventry, who was sports minister in Zimbabwe for the past seven years, told reporters Thursday.

Many, if not most, members want more say in how the IOC makes decisions after nearly 12 years of Bach’s tight executive control. It was a theme in manifestos by the other election candidates, and the runner-up in March, IOC vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch, will lead one of the sessions.

“I like people to say: ‘Yes, I had a say and this was the direction that we went,’” Coventry said. “That way, you get really authentic buy-in.”

In an in-house IOC interview, Coventry also described how she wanted to be perceived: “She never changed. Always humble, always approachable.”

That could mean more member input, if not an open and contested vote, to decide the 2036 Olympics host.

The 2036 decision

Coventry’s win was widely seen as positive for the ambitions of India, and its richest family, to host the Summer Games that will follow Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032.

Nita Ambani, the philanthropist wife of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, has been an IOC member since 2016 and helped promote India’s Olympic bid in Paris last year.

She and Coventry are seen as being close, and the 2036 hosting award is among the biggest decisions pending.

“It is an open question,” Coventry told reporters Thursday. “For me as a president I need to be able to remain neutral.”

Qatar is bidding for the Summer Games for a fourth time and Saudi Arabia also is interested. A regional Middle East bid could be a political and logistical solution.

A Bach legacy is the policy of fast-tracking well-connected bidders into exclusive negotiations toward a rubber-stamp vote by IOC members.

Russia’s return

At some point in Coventry’s presidency, Russia could possibly return fully to the Olympic family. It is unclear exactly when less than eight months before the 2026 Winter Games opening ceremony in Milan.

Russian athletes have faced a wider blanket ban in winter sports than summer ones during the military invasion of Ukraine. Even neutral status for individual Russians to compete looks elusive.

Vladimir Putin offered “sincere congratulations” on Coventry’s election win, with the Kremlin praising her “high authority in the sporting world.”

However, there seems little scope for the IOC to lift its formal suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee imposed in 2023 because of a territorial grab in sports administration. Four regional sports bodies in eastern Ukraine were taken under Russian control.

Coventry said she will ask a task force to review IOC policy relating to athletes from countries involved in wars and conflicts.

Gender equality

The first Summer Games under a female presidency will be the first with a majority of athlete quota places for women.

Another task force is promised to look at gender eligibility issues, after the turmoil around women’s boxing and two gold medalists in Paris. The new World Boxing governing body said last month it will introduce mandatory sex testing.

Coventry often states the importance of “Olympic Values,” which include gender parity, inclusion and inspiring young people through sports. “That is something that we can never, never, never compromise. And we have to be proud of that.”

IOC housekeeping

The top-tier Olympic sponsor program might have peaked in Paris with 15 partners earning the IOC more than US$1.6 billion in cash and services over the past two years.

The sponsor slate is down to 11 after all three Japanese sponsors and US tech firm Intel did not renew, though a major new backer from India is all-but promised.

Total revenue was $7.7 billion for 2021-24, including $3.25 billion of broadcasting revenue in 2024. It helps fund the Olympic Channel media operation in Madrid and about 700 staff in Lausanne. Salary and staff costs topped $250 million last year.

Though the future broadcasting landscape is hard to predict, the IOC has said $7.4 billion already is secured through 2028, and $4 billion for the 2033-36 commercial cycle. That sum was topped up in March with a foundational $3 billion deal.

NBC renewed for two more Olympics through the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Games and the 2036 Summer Games that look destined for Asia.

The IOC also has a 12-year deal with Saudi Arabia through 2036 to host a video gaming Esports Olympics, though the launch is delayed until at least 2027.

Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press