Category: Olympics

From protecting women’s sport to the return of Russia and keeping the Olympics relevant, the former gold medallist has tough challenges ahead

As a seven-time Olympic swimming medallist, Kirsty Coventry knows a thing or two about navigating choppy waters. But the new International Olympic Committee president now faces the biggest set of challenges to global sport since the 1980s, when boycotts rocked the Moscow and Los Angeles Games. As the 41-year-old prepares to take over from Thomas Bach in June, what issues will she face?

Poll result defied candidates’ calculations and illustrated outgoing president’s influence but change may yet come

It might sound beyond ridiculous, given the scale of Kirsty Coventry’s seismic victory in the International Olympic Committee presidential election. But as the various royals, sporting dignitaries, politicians and billionaires left the Costa Navarino resort on Friday, some really believed the result could have turned out very differently.

Yes, the 41-year-old Zimbabwean ex-swimmer had won in the first round with 49 votes to become the first woman to lead the IOC. And yes, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Sebastian Coe, the other members of the “Big Three”, had come away with just 28 and eight votes respectively. But in the postmortem there were several stories about how the IOC machine had powered Thomas Bach’s chosen successor over the line.

Kirsty Coventry has been elected president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), becoming the first woman and first African in the committee's 131-year history to get the job. The former swimmer, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, won 49 of the 97 votes of the IOC membership in the first round of voting

• Kirsty Coventry elected first female president of IOC as Coe routed in vote

A vote expected to be tense, tight and protracted turned out to be one-sided and extraordinarily brief, ending with Kirsty Coventry’s election as IOC president

In addition to the seven candidates a total of eight IOC members will not be allowed to vote in the first round. They are using an electronic voting process that involves some kind of smart card, which are currently being distributed.

All of the important procedural stuff are in the preamble or at the bottom of this page.

• Kendrick Lamar expected to perform at opening ceremony
• Organizers do not anticipate visa problems for teams

The organizers of the 2028 Olympics say the Games will help Los Angeles rebuild after the wildfires that devastated the city earlier this year.

“The rebirth, the rebuild, maybe reimagining LA 2.0 — and the Olympics as a catalyst for all those things – we think is really part of our ethos,” LA 2028 organizing committee chairman Casey Wasserman told the Associated Press during the International Olympic Committee’s annual meeting. “You can’t have a natural disaster at that scale in a city as big and as important as Los Angeles and not have it be part of your core philosophy going forward.”

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Just when in history did the nebulous notion of “pop culture” as we know it actually begin? And what particular person or event kicked it off? Were there any D-list celebrities to venerate in the ancient world, for instance? RobertosMitch, via email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

The average sports fan is increasingly a big-eventer and there is a risk of the Games losing out in the attention economy

We are knee-deep in Twixmas: that twilight zone between Christmas and new year, excess and reflection, lists and yet more lists. Over the past week there have been many saluting the best sporting moments of 2024. Yet across the globe there is one constant: these lists are dominated by a Paris Olympics seared into the memory. Nothing else came close.

Pick your day, relive the moment. Keely Hodgkinson, Alex Yee, Simone Biles, Léon Marchand, Mondo Duplantis, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and a men’s 1500m final for the ages; I was fortunate to see them all up close. But even that list still barely scratches the surface. As Christophe Dubi, the executive director of the Olympics, put it to me recently, Paris 2024 was like the Dude in the Big Lebowski: the right Games at the right time and place.

Gold, silver and bronze medallists reflect on what they did as 2024 broke and how they will celebrate 12 months on

Toby Roberts’ last New Year’s Eve is all a bit of a blur. It’s not that he was drinking – anything but – just that he was in the thick of such a hellish stretch of specialist winter training that the days have all blended into one. His father, and coach, Tristian, eventually reminds him that they spent most of it doing a strength session on a climbing board with a couple of friends. “Oh,” Toby says, not quite recalling. “Honestly, my New Year’s Eve is not that exciting. I just do my same old.”

• Hediger represented Switzerland at Winter Olympics
• Swiss-Ski federation: ‘We are speechless’

The Olympic snowboarder Sophie Hediger has died following an avalanche accident in Arosa on Monday, the Swiss-Ski federation has announced.

Hediger, 26, was a member of the snowboard cross-national team and took part in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China before achieving her first two World Cup podium places in the 2023-24 season.