It took less than three weeks before new IOC president and 7-time Olympic swimming medalist Kirsty Leigh Coventry Seward quickly established her influence and made her mark on the Olympic movement.
The 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will feature six new sprint swimming events: men’s and women’s 50m backstroke, 50m breaststroke, and 50m butterfly. The races are expected to be viewed by 38,000 spectators in the SoFi Stadium, the largest natatorium in Olympic history.
The IOC Executive Board – headed by Coventry – unanimously endorsed the proposal made last week by World Aquatics, significantly boosting pool swimming within the Olympics.
As a result, pool swimmers will compete in 41 medal events at LA28. There will be 55 total aquatic events in LA28 including pool swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, and the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim. This is the most number of events for any sport in the history of the Olympic Games.
World Aquatics reported on the history of swimming, one of four sports that has been contested at every Summer Olympic Games since 1896. “Hungary’s Alfréd Hajós [nicknamed the Hungarian Dolphin], became the first Olympic swim champion, winning gold in the 100m freestyle. The 1896 Athens Olympics also offered the 100m freestyle for sailors, the 400m freestyle, and the 1200m freestyle.“
All four races were held, one after the other, on April 11th 1896 in the Bay of Zea, off the Piraeus coast in the Aegean Sea. All the events were ship-to-shore courses.
Paul Neumann, an Austrian open water swimmer and physician who also earned a PhD in philosophy, won the 500m freestyle at the 1896 Olympics. Hajós [shown on the left below] also won the 1200m freestyle, a point-to-point race [shown on the right below] while Ioannis Malokinis won the 100m swim for sailors from the Greek Royal Navy.
Until the 1908 London Olympics, all Olympic swimming events were held in open water.
Coventry won her 7 Olympic medals in the 100m and 200m backstrokes, and 200m and 400m individual medleys representing her country of Zimbabwe. She remains the most decorated Olympian from Africa and is the first women to become President of the International Olympic Committee.
Talk about giving back to the sport.
The 41-year-old from Harare said upon her election at the 10th IOC President, “As a 9-year-old, I never thought I would be able to…give back to this incredible [Olympic] movement of ours. I will lead this organization with some much pride. The young girl who first started swimming in Zimbabwe all those years ago could never have dreamt of this moment.”
Additionally, the IOC Executive Board also approved the women’s water polo competition at the LA28 Games to have 12 teams, the same as the men’s competition in a decision for gender parity. In 2000, the women’s water polo competition had 6 teams. Then the competition grew to 8 teams in 2008 and 10 teams in 2020 Tokyo, and now 12 teams in 2028 Los Angeles, the same number of men’s teams.
For more information on Coventry, visit www.kirstycoventry.com and here for the background of her groundbreaking election as president .
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