Armed robbers broke into the Zimbabwe home of Kirsty Coventry's parents and restrained them before making off with sporting mementos belonging to the new International Olympic Committee president. Among the items stolen were swimming costumes worn by Coventry, 41, when she won gold medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the 2008 Games in Beijing. The thieves also took $15,000 (£11,500) in cash, jewellery with an estimated value of £46,000 and three hunting guns, according to police. Several of the items removed by the intruders, who tied up Robert Edwin and Lyn Coventry with shoelaces, have since been recovered, police told local reporters. The robbery took place on March 10, ten days before Coventry was elected IOC president. Three men have been arrested, two of them brothers who were due to appear in court on Friday. Coventry, the only athlete to have won individual Olympic gold medals for Zimbabwe, saw off competition from six other candidates, including Britain's Seb Coe, to become the IOC’s first female leader. But her achievement in securing 49 of the 97 available votes in the first round of Thursday's election in Greece is not without controversy. Since 2018, Coventry has served as minister for youth and sport in the cabinet of Emmerson Mnangagwa, who ousted Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe's president in 2017 and has overseen a brutal crackdown on opposition figures, supporters and journalists. Sport in Zimbabwe has not flourished on Coventry's watch. In 2022, Fifa imposed an 18-month ban from international competition on the Zimbabwe Football Association over government interference. Coventry ignored calls for her to resign in protest at her government’s corruption and abuses. In 2020, in what was seen as a reward for her silence, she was offered and accepted the lease on part of a farm that had been stolen at the height of Mugabe’s violent land grab more than two decades ago. Ben Freeth, 55, a Zimbabwean farmer and human rights activist whose family also lost out in the land grab and had their home burnt down, said he was 'appalled that the IOC should make her president after her record being in the Zanu government and her succumbing to the temptation of taking on a farm that hasn’t been compensated for'. Coventry, who has vowed to introduce a blanket ban on transgender athletes competing in female Olympic sports, is likely to face questions over her involvement on the participation of two female fighters in the Paris Games last year. She was part of the IOC executive board that approved rules allowing eventual gold medallists Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting to compete despite the International Boxing Association alleging they failed to meet gender eligibility. The IBA's ruling meant the fighters were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships. 'My stance is we will protect the female category and female athletes,' said Coventry. 'I want to work together with the international federations and I want the IOC to take up more of a leading role. 'We are going to bring everyone together to sit down and have a bit more input in the discussion.' The Foreign Office has objected to any favourable consideration of Zimbabwe’s application for readmission to the Commonwealth. Mugabe pulled the country out of the bloc in 2003, a year after it was suspended for farm seizures, election-rigging and rights abuses.