The International Olympic Committee, the sporting world’s equivalent of a white-collar crime family, has made its decision on who will succeed the outgoing president, Thomas Bach. Representatives gathered in Greece at Costa Navarino, to make their decision.

From the list of seven candidates, former Zimbabwean athlete and winner of seven medals, Kirsty Coventry, received the minimum number of votes for a first-round win: 49 of the 97 cast. She had been Bach’s preferred choice, bettering Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. (28 votes) and Sebastian Coe (8 votes). At 41, she is the second-youngest IOC chief in history and its first woman president. From time to time, crime families will change tack.

It is clear that Coventry’s election might leave a strong impression that something is changing at the IOC. It gives the impression that a top female sporting administrator is necessarily going to improve the reputation of a body that has found escaping the orbit of habitual corruption and cynicism impossible.

The wheels of propaganda were certainly turning quickly after the vote. The Sports Examiner gave a good example of this, noting the increasing emphasis by the IOC leadership on the importance of picking athletes for top administrative positions, as opposed to the customary string of dreary businessmen, millionaires and entitled royalty. Bach’s 12 years in office had seen the elevation of both the number of athletes and women in the body of elected members, supplying “the demographic building blocks of Coventry’s 49 votes and her first-round victory.”

To stress that point was Israeli member and her country’s first Olympic medal winner, Yael Arad. “I think it’s big history for the Olympic Movement,” she

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