Kirsty Coventry elected first female president of International Olympic Committee

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece — Kirsty Coventry was been elected president of the International Olympic Committee as the first woman and first African to get perhaps the biggest job in global sports aged just 41.

The Zimbabwe sports minister and two-time Olympic swimming gold medalist got a stunning first-round win in the seven-candidate contest after voting by nearly 100 of her colleagues in the IOC membership.

It had been the most open and hard-to-call IOC presidential election in decades with no clear front-runner before the vote.