Malaysia’s Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian to win this year’s Best Actress Oscar and a former squash champion, was elected this Tuesday to a four-year term on 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 an overwhelming majority, along with former Israeli judoka Yael Arad, Hungarian sports leader Balazs Furies, former volleyball player and Peruvian parliament member Cecilia Villacorta, a German sports event organizer. Michael Mronz and the head of the Tunisian Olympic Committee, Mehrez Boussaen.
The session also elected two presidents of international federations depending on their functions: Swede Petra Sörling, who heads the table tennis federation, and Korean Jae Yul Kim, who heads the International Skating Union.
Although Michelle Yeoh is neither a former Olympian nor a sports executive, she is the biggest name among the eight newcomers, seven months after winning an Oscar for her role in the screwball comedy Everywhere at Once.
However, the actress was a Malaysian junior champion in squash – a sport that was just voted into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics by the IOC – and was a longtime dancer before she was injured and abandoned her career as a ballerina.
Breaking out in 1984 in a series of action films alongside Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung, she arrived on the world stage in 1997 playing James Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies and went on to star in hits such as The Tiger and the Dragon. . Memoirs of a Geisha and most recently Crazy Rich Asians.
Over the course of 40 years, she has produced more than 50 films, and has about ten projects in pre-production, including 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.
Source: Le Parisien
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