Malaysian Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian woman to win this year’s Oscar for best actress and former squash champion, was elected this Tuesday for four years to the International Olympic Committee during the body’s 141st session in Bombay.
Proposed by the IOC Executive Board in September, the 61-year-old artist was named by a large majority alongside former Israeli judoka Yael Arad, Hungarian sports leader Balazs Fürjes, ex-volleyball player and MP Peruvian Cecilia Villacorta, the German sports event organizer Michael Mronz and the head of the Tunisian Olympic Committee Mehrez Boussayene.
The session also elected two presidents of international federations because of their functions: the Swedish Petra Sörling, who heads the table tennis federation, and the Korean Jae Youl Kim, at the head of the International Skating Union.
The 141st IOC Session elected eight new IOC Members – four women and four men – bringing the proportion of women on the IOC membership to 41.1%.
This is in keeping with the IOC’s ambition to lead by example and increase female representation in governance structures.
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— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) October 17, 2023
While Michelle Yeoh is neither a former Olympic participant nor a sports executive, she is the best-known personality among the eight newcomers, seven months after receiving an Oscar for her role in the crazy comedy “Everywhere All At Once “.
The actress was nevertheless Malaysia’s junior squash champion – a sport for which the IOC has just voted to enter the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles -, and practiced dancing for a long time before injuring herself and giving up a career as a ballerina.
Revealed from 1984 by a series of action films, alongside Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung, she emerged on the global scene in 1997 by playing the James Bond girl in “Tomorrow Never Dies”, before playing in hits like “Tiger and Dragon,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” and more recently “Crazy Rich Asians.”
With more than 50 films to her credit in 40 years, the actress has around ten projects in preparation, including the new Avatar films.
She has long been the companion of Frenchman Jean Todt, a key figure in world motorsport, former director of the Ferrari Formula 1 team and president of the International Automobile Federation.
