MILAN (AP) — The IOC elected its first female member from Iran on Wednesday, who became its current youngest representative and opened the Olympic body to scrutiny over the country's record on women in sports.
Soraya Aghaei, who competed for Iran in badminton at the Tokyo Olympics, is now the 107th member of the International Olympic Committee by a 95-2 vote. She is just the third-ever Iranian representative at the IOC and the first since 2004.
The IOC invites prospective members to join an exclusive body that includes former Olympic athletes, leaders of international sports bodies, members of royal families, former political leaders, diplomats, industrialists and an Oscar-winning actress.
Aghaei joins the global Olympic body when it is led by the first female president in its 132-year history, Kirsty Coventry. Women now comprise 45% of the membership, the IOC said.
Coventry was later asked at a news conference how Aghaei's entry to the IOC could link to changing Iran's refusal to send female athletes to the Olympics in sports such as swimming, because of religious dress codes.
“I think she is going to be an incredible asset to the IOC,” Coventry said, without addressing the question of discrimination. She described Aghaei as "an incredible young lady who was a very good athlete and has been a really good coach.”
In Olympic history, Iran won three medals in women's events, all in taekwondo. The first of them, Kimia Alizadeh, took bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games then left the country she criticized for its mandate to wear the hijab headscarf. Alizadeh took bronze in Paris in 2024 competing for Bulgaria after losing to her Iranian former teammate Nahid Kiyani Chandeh.
Aghaei's eight-year term on the IOC will include voting to choose a host for the 2036 Summer Games.
The 30-year-old member of the Iranian Olympic body’s athletes commission became the youngest IOC member at the same meeting 31-year-old Samira Asghari of Afghanistan was reelected for her second term.
When Aghaei competed at the Tokyo Summer Games held in 2021 she was Iran’s first female Olympian in the sport.
The previous Iranian badminton player at the Olympics, in 2008 at Beijing, was Kaveh Mehrabi who is now director of the IOC athletes’ department.
Iran's first IOC member for more than 20 years from 1955 was Gholam Reza Pahlavi, the brother of the then-Shah who was deposed during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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