As you all know, the former Olympic swimming champion Kirsty Coventry has become the first woman and the first African to lead the International Olympic Committee in its 131-year history.

For the record, Kirsty, 41, is not the youngest IOC president in history as widely reported: Pierre de Coubertin was 33 years old when he took to the throne for his 29-year reign soon after the Athens 1896 opener came to an end and the first IOC president, Demetrios Vikelas (his appointment linked to the staging of the rebirth of the Games) stepped down.

There are two records there that Coventry cannot break: youngest and longest-serving. Indeed, the French baron can never be beaten on the latter because of rule changes on terms of office.

Among records still up for grabs for the 2004-2008 Olympic backstroke champion from Zimbabwe and based in the U.S. during her peak-performance years, is this: Coubertin came out of retirement at the invitation of the Nazis in their successful bid to host Berlin 1936. Returning the favour, Hitler's administration nominated the baron for the Nobel Peace Prize. The 1935 winner, however, was the anti-Nazi Carl von Ossietzky.

We live in times when it's helpful to remind ourselves that for every bad turn in history there's a good one waiting to happen.

It's 2025 and Coventry delivered a sharp-shock, knockout victory in the first round of voting, a female politician punching above the weight of six males in an organisation that in recent years forgot that sex matters in the realm it governs.

That first-round 49 out of 97 voting members victory - with her own vote counted in each of those counts - closest rival 21 votes behind - did not only come down to the backing of athletes and sorority of IOC members, but the female vote was a significant factor. The vanquished included Britain’s Sebastian Coe, on the back of a Bach campaign designed to ensure continuity.

Job done. Perhaps. But certainly in this sense: Thomas Bach's elevation to 'life president' saw the coin land the way he intended - 'behind every good woman is a good man', so to speak. On June 23, Olympic Day, he will not be so much gone after 12 years in the top office as gone from view, his influence simply shifted to a comfortable VIP suite deeper down the Lausanne corridors of power.

Coventry may see things differently - and she would be wise to be her own woman, and do just that.

She didn't reveal what "some of those ideas we all shared" and getting down to "the work we have together" in her acceptance speech actually meant but worth keeping this moment as the record of her coronation and the hope and promise in her words:

Coventry now has a great opportunity to set the IOC on a new course over a period of up to 12 years, according to the term conditions in the latest version of a flexible rule book apt to allow for interpretation to be nine tenths of the law.

It's also a moment to express some of the truths and concerns that rest in the roots of the challenges she and those who works with must now own.

So, here we go...