Swimming legend Kirsty Coventry yesterday announced that she was pregnant, ending an eventful week in which she became the first ever former Zimbabwean professional sportsperson to be appointed the country’s Sports minister.
BY DANIEL NHAKANISO
Coventry, who will today celebrate her 35th birthday, made the announcement on her official Twitter account after posting a picture of her with her husband, Tyrone Seward.
The picture was accompanied by the message that the couple, who got married in 2013, would be parents in May next year.
“We are going to be parents in May 2019! What a week, what a blessing!” Coventry said.
Coventry and Chinhoyi-born Seward got married in January 2013, with the latter paying the customary bride price (lobola) to the Coventrys for the swimming icon, who had earlier revealed that she wanted a traditional marriage.
Following the traditional marriage, the lovebirds later exchanged wedding vows during a private ceremony held in Harare in August 2013.
Coventry, a seven-time Olympic medallist and a current member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s executive board, was sworn in as the country’s new Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation minister last Monday.
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Coventry was vice-president of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee and also chairs the IOC’s athletes’ commission.
She won gold medals in the 200-metre backstroke at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and also has four silvers and a bronze, the most Olympic medals by an African athlete.
Coventry, who shares the record of most individual medals by a female swimmer at the Olympics with Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary, retired after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, her fifth Olympics, having won seven of Zimbabwe’s eight all-time medals.
