Who is Kirsty Coventry, the next president of the International Olympic Committee?

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The next president of the International Olympic Committee is a former Zimbabwe swimmer who is Africa's most decorated Olympian and a minister in a government often accused of oppressing political opposition.

Kirsty Coventry, 41, was elected to one of the most powerful jobs in sports on Thursday, becoming the first woman and first African to lead the Olympic movement.

She will begin her eight-year term in charge of the IOC in June.

Coventry was the back-to-back Olympic champion in the 200 meters backstroke in 2004 and 2008. She retired from swimming after the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 with seven Olympic medals, more than anyone else from Africa.

By then she was already an IOC member, getting her place in 2013 almost one year after an initial result of an athlete election at the London Olympics was overturned in part because she filed a complaint against an opponent.

Coventry is also currently Zimbabwe's minister of youth, sports, arts and recreation, drawing some scrutiny of her affiliation with a government that has long faced accusations of cracking down on democratic freedoms and suppressing criticism in the southern African country.

Her country and the government she serves in has been targeted with sanctions by the United States and the European Union.

At the height of her swimming career, Coventry was praised and rewarded with a diplomatic passport and $100,000 by late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, an autocratic leader who ruled his country for 37 years until he was removed in a military-backed coup in 2017.

Mugabe called her Zimbabwe's “Golden Girl,” and she was widely praised across racial lines as a source of pride in her country at a time when it was reeling from Mugabe's policy of violently seizing farmland from white people.

Coventry became the minister of sports a year after the coup that removed Mugabe in the new administration of current President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe's vice president who rights groups say has continued many of Mugabe's oppressive policies.

Coventry was just 34 when she was appointed a government minister in a move that was greeted with surprise because she was young and had little political experience, but also because she is white. She was reappointed sports minister after disputed elections in 2023.

She said in a victory news conference Thursday that she will likely resign as Zimbabwe's sports minister and move full-time to the IOC's home city Lausanne, Switzerland.

Coventry attended an all-girls convent school in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. She went to college at Auburn University in Alabama and became one of its star swimmers. She made her Olympic debut in Sydney in 2000 while still in high school. She won three medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics and four medals at the 2008 Beijing Games.

From 2018 to 2021, Coventry was the athlete representative on the IOC executive board under Thomas Bach, the man she was elected to succeed. Coventry left some athlete groups frustrated that she followed the IOC and Bach policy line too closely.

Coventry's effectiveness as a sports leader in her home country has been questioned by some. Zimbabwe has been banned from hosting international soccer games by the African confederation since 2020 because it doesn't have a stadium that meets the required standard.

During Coventry's first news conference as the next IOC president, the Zimbabwe men's team was playing a “home” game in a 2026 World Cup qualifying group in Durban in neighboring South Africa because of its stadium problems.

Zimbabwe was also temporarily suspended from international soccer by world body FIFA in 2022 because of government interference. Zimbabwe was allowed back into international soccer in 2023.

IOC President Thomas Bach holds up the name of Kirsty Coventry as she is announced as the new IOC President at the International Olympic Committee 144th session in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

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

Kirsty Coventry, right, is embraced by Anita Defrantz after she was announced as the new IOC President at the International Olympic Committee 144th session in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

FILE - Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry smiles after receiving her gold medal after the women's 200-meter backstroke final during the swimming competitions in the National Aquatics Center at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)

MALE, Maldives (AP) — Finnish divers on Tuesday recovered the bodies of two of the four remaining Italians who died deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll in the Maldives, an official said.

The bodies were located on Monday, when searches resumed after being suspended following the death of a local military diver during a perilous mission to try to reach them.

Five Italian divers went missing on Thursday, with one of the bodies recovered earlier. The plan is to recover the remaining two bodies on Wednesday.

The announcement that two bodies were recovered on Tuesday was made by presidential spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef.

Maldives government spokesman Ahmed Shaam had earlier said that the three Finnish divers would retrieve the bodies, which were lying at a depth of around 60 meters (200 feet). The legal depth for recreational diving in the Maldives is 30 meters (nearly 100 feet).

The government of the Indian Ocean island nation on Monday said that the bodies were spotted in the innermost part of the cave by the three Finnish diving experts, supported by the Maldives police and the military.

“As was previously thought, the four bodies were found inside the cave, not only inside the cave, but well inside the cave into the third segment of the cave, which is the largest part,” Shaam said.

He said that the four bodies were found “pretty much together."

The Divers’ Alert Network Europe, which deployed the three Finnish divers, said on its website that they are technical and cave divers with international experience in search and recovery missions, including operations in “deep overhead environments, confined spaces and high-risk scenarios.”

The team used advanced technical systems, including closed-circuit rebreathers, a system that recycles exhaled breathing gas and removes carbon dioxide through a chemical scrubber, allowing for “significantly longer dives,” the organization said.

The body of a fifth Italian — a diving instructor — was found earlier outside the cave on the day they were reported missing. The five were exploring a cave at a depth of about 50 meters (160 feet) in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry.

Initial teams had already dived to identify and mark the entrance to the cave system where the Italians disappeared.

In this handout photo release by Maldives President Media Division, a Finnish diver gets ready to attempt to recover the bodies of two of the four Italians who died deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll earlier this month, at Alimathaa Island, in Vaavu Atoll, Maldives, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Maldives President Media Division via AP)

In this handout photo release by Maldives President Media Division, a Finnish diver, left, gets ready to attempt to recover the bodies of two of the four Italians who died deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll earlier this month, at Alimathaa Island, in Vaavu Atoll, Maldives, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Maldives President Media Division via AP)

This image released by the Maldives President's Media Division, shows divers preparing to search for the four missing Italian divers near Alimathaa Island, Vaavu Atoll, Maldives, Saturday, May 15, 2026. (Maldives President's Media Division via AP)