HARARE – Kirsty Coventry will become the first woman to hold the most powerful role in sport, having been elected the 10th International Olympic Committee (IOC) president at a meeting in Greece.
The Zimbabwean sports minister and double Olympic swimming champion is also the first African and, at the age of 41, the youngest person to take up the position. But her victory is controversial as well as groundbreaking.
BBC Sport looks at why.
A landslide win and a new era Despite predictions of a close race between the seven candidates and expectations of multiple rounds of voting, Coventry secured an overall majority of the secret ballot after just one round, winning 49 votes out of a possible 97.
Despite being widely seen as the pre-vote favourite, Spanish rival Juan Antonio Samaranch Jnr trailed behind with 28 votes.
Lord Coe meanwhile – the highest profile candidate with a CV that boasts overseeing London 2012 and running World Athletics – could only muster a meagre eight votes.
Before the vote he and his team had seemed confident that he could secure the job he said he had been in training all his life for. Had they been naive, or had some members told them one thing and done another?
A year after Paris 2024 set a milestone as the first Olympics to achieve full gender parity, Coventry’s triumph sends a powerful message.
Up until 1981 there were no female members of the IOC and Coventry is only the second woman to run for the presidency.
Her background and relative youth also helps the IOC project a progressive and diverse image at a time when it is trying to ensure the Games remain relevant to younger generations.
As well as being a seven-time Olympic medallist and competing at five Games, Coventry has been an IOC member since 2013, where she has held a number of significant roles.
But the nature of her victory – despite a low-key campaign – has led to questions over how it was achieved.
IOC insiders that BBC Sport spoke to at the luxury resort of Costa Navarino in Greece, where Thursday’s vote took place, all said that Coventry was the preferred candidate of outgoing president Thomas Bach.
The German denied suggestions that he had been directly lobbying on her behalf, and insisted that the process had been fair.
On Friday, he said he was “very much relieved” to see the result of the vote, calling it “a demonstration of the IOC as a global organisation with the highest good governance standards”.
Whatever the reality, Coventry’s success has been widely portrayed as a win for continuity and patronage at the IOC, and for her long-time mentor Bach, and evidence of his influence over an organisation he has ruled since 2013, and with its membership – most of which he has appointed.
The result will also intensify scrutiny of the IOC’s secretive and highly restrictive election process.
The exclusive organisation – made up of royals, heads of state, former athletes and figures from business and politics – seems resistant to the change that candidates like Coe stood for.
The double Olympic champion was the reform candidate, but his pledge to shake up the IOC clearly did not appeal to many.
At World Athletics, Coe had taken a tougher stance than the IOC on Russian doping and gender eligibility, and introduced the idea of cash for gold medals at Paris 2024, a move that antagonised Bach.
The rules require the IOC hierarchy to remain neutral in any presidential election.
Coe was magnanimous in the immediate aftermath of defeat, but it was telling perhaps that when I asked him if it had been a fair fight, he simply answered, “Oh, it’s an election.”
