MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyrev said on Friday he was ready for talks with newly-elected President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Kirsty Coventry.
"I’m ready to set off to Lausanne anytime," Degtyarev, who also serves as the president of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), said in an interview with Russia’s Rossiya-24 television channel.
"I am sure that we will have a meeting in the weeks to come," Degtyarev added.
Coventry, 41, was elected to take the reign over the Olympic body after the vote at the IOC’s session in Greece earlier in the week. She is now the first ever female IOC president expected to officially assume the office on June 24.
In all, seven candidates vied for the IOC presidency at the organization’s 144th session, held in Greece between March 18 and 21. The list of candidates included Sebastian Coe (Great Britain), Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr (Spain), Morinari Watanabe (Japan), Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe), David Lappartient (France), Johan Eliasch (Great Britain) and Prince Faisal bin Hussein (Jordan).
Zimbabwe’s Coventry is a two-time Olympic champion in the swimming 200-meter backstroke (2004 and 2008). She also packs three Olympic silver medals and one bronze and she is a three-time world champion.
The newly-elected IOC president served as Zimbabwe's Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture since 2018. Coventry has been a member of the IOC Executive Board since 2023, having served as a member of the organization between 2018 and 2021.
Late last month, the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board has accepted a resignation letter from IOC President Thomas Bach, who is now officially scheduled to step down in late June.
Olympic gold medalist Bach, 71, was elected president of the IOC in 2013 at the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires for a term of eight years.
Bach won his Olympic gold in the team foil competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. After serving his initial eight-year term as IOC president, he ran for another four-year term in the 2021 elections, where he was the sole candidate and was ultimately re-elected.
IOC sanctions against Russia, Belarus
On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to prohibit athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.
In late March, 2023, the IOC recommended allowing individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in international sports tournaments, but only under specific conditions. Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status. Russia and Belarus were also banned from participating in international team events.
On October 12, 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions as its members.