Kirsty Coven­try was elect­ed pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day and be­came the first woman and first African to get per­haps the biggest job in world sports.

“It is a sig­nal that we are tru­ly glob­al,” the Zim­bab­we sports min­is­ter and two-time Olympic swim­ming gold medal­ist said.

Hers was a stun­ning first-round win in the sev­en-can­di­date con­test af­ter vot­ing by 97 IOC mem­bers.

She gets an eight-year man­date in­to 2033 aged just 41 — youth­ful by the his­tor­i­cal stan­dards of the IOC.

It was the most open and hard-to-call IOC pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in decades with Coven­try ex­pect­ed to lead the first round short of an ab­solute ma­jor­i­ty. Though sev­er­al rounds of votes were wide­ly pre­dict­ed, she got the ex­act ma­jor­i­ty of 49 need­ed.

Coven­try’s win al­so was a vic­to­ry for out­go­ing IOC pres­i­dent Thomas Bach, who has long been seen as pro­mot­ing her as his suc­ces­sor. He did not use his right to vote.

“I will make all of you very, very proud and hope­ful­ly ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent in the de­ci­sion you have tak­en,” Coven­try said in her ac­cep­tance speech. “Now we have got some work to­geth­er.”

Walk­ing to the podi­um, she was con­grat­u­lat­ed and kissed on both cheeks by Juan An­to­nio Sama­ranch, her ex­pect­ed clos­est ri­val who got 28 votes.

Al­so in the race were four pres­i­dents of sports gov­ern­ing bod­ies: Track and field's Se­bas­t­ian Coe, ski­ing's Jo­han Eliasch, cy­cling’s David Lap­par­tient, and gym­nas­tics' Mori­nari Watan­abe. Al­so con­tend­ing was Prince Feisal al Hus­sein of Jor­dan.

Coven­try will for­mal­ly re­place her men­tor Bach on June 23 — of­fi­cial­ly Olympic Day — as the 10th IOC pres­i­dent in its 131-year his­to­ry. Bach reached the max­i­mum 12 years in of­fice.

Key chal­lenges for the 41-year-old Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate will be steer­ing the Olympic move­ment through po­lit­i­cal and sport­ing is­sues to­ward the 2028 Sum­mer Games in Los An­ge­les, in­clud­ing en­gag­ing in diplo­ma­cy with U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Coven­try’s IOC will al­so need to find a host for the 2036 Sum­mer Games which could go to In­dia or the Mid­dle East.

The strongest can­di­dates in a five-month cam­paign with tight­ly con­trolled rules draft­ed by the Bach-led IOC seemed to be Coven­try — who gave birth to her sec­ond child — IOC vice pres­i­dent Sama­ranch and Coe.

Coven­try's man­i­festo of­fered most­ly con­ti­nu­ity from Bach with lit­tle new de­tail, while her ri­vals had specifics to ben­e­fit Olympic ath­letes, which she was as re­cent­ly as 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Coe's World Ath­let­ics broke an Olympic taboo by pay­ing $50,000 to track and field gold medal­ists in Paris last year. Sama­ranch promised to re­lax strict IOC com­mer­cial rules and give ath­letes con­trol of footage of their Olympic per­for­mances.

Sama­ranch tried to fol­low his fa­ther, al­so Juan An­to­nio Sama­ranch, who was the IOC’s sev­enth pres­i­dent from 1980 to 2001.

Coe aimed to add to a re­mark­able ca­reer of Olympic tri­umphs: A two-time Olympic gold medal­ist in the 1,500 me­ters, he led a bid­ding team for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics, then worked for the next sev­en years to head the or­ga­niz­ing team of those wide­ly praised Games. He got just eight votes.

It has been a stel­lar week for Bach, who greet­ed Coven­try and shared warm smiles af­ter her ac­cep­tance speech.

Bach was fet­ed on Wednes­day in an emo­tion­al start to the IOC an­nu­al meet­ing, get­ting lav­ish praise and the ti­tle of hon­orary pres­i­dent for life. He re­peat­ed his wish to of­fer ad­vice to the next pres­i­dent.

His hands-on ex­ec­u­tive-style pres­i­den­cy will de­liv­er over a fi­nan­cial­ly se­cure IOC, on track to earn more than $8 bil­lion in rev­enue through the 2028 LA Olympics, and with a slate of fu­ture hosts through 2034: in Italy, the Unit­ed States, France, Aus­tralia and fi­nal­ly the U.S. again, when the Win­ter Games re­turn to Salt Lake City.

A sig­na­ture Bach pol­i­cy al­so has been gen­der par­i­ty, with equal quo­tas of men and women ath­letes at the 2024 Paris Olympics and giv­ing a bet­ter bal­ance of fe­male mem­bers of the IOC and the ex­ec­u­tive board he chairs, which now has sev­en women among its 15 mem­bers, in­clud­ing Coven­try.

Her win on Thurs­day will on­ly add to Bach's lega­cy for pro­mot­ing women.

Coven­try won back-to-back ti­tles in 200-me­ters back­stroke at the 2004 Athens Olympics and Bei­jing four years lat­er. She joined the IOC in 2013, al­most one year af­ter a dis­put­ed ath­lete elec­tion at the Lon­don Olympics. Her place among the four ath­letes elect­ed was even­tu­al­ly award­ed af­ter Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport rul­ings against two op­po­nents.

The next pres­i­dent can over­see the IOC mak­ing a state­ment choice for its host for the 2036 Sum­mer Games.

“There is one and one on­ly,” Sama­ranch said on Wednes­day when asked about chal­lenges ahead. “We must con­cen­trate (on) suc­cess­ful and rel­e­vant Olympic Games. The rest comes with suc­cess in the Games.”

The vot­ers in the ex­clu­sive in­vit­ed club of IOC mem­bers in­clude roy­al fam­i­ly mem­bers, for­mer law­mak­ers and diplo­mats, busi­ness lead­ers, sports of­fi­cials and Olympic ath­letes. Even an Os­car-win­ning ac­tress, Michelle Yeoh.

Mem­bers vot­ed with­out hear­ing fur­ther pre­sen­ta­tions from the can­di­dates in an elec­tion that swung on a dis­creet net­work of friend­ships and al­liances large­ly forged out of sight.

COS­TA NAVARI­NO, Greece (AP)