Lochlann Walsh has been elected as the new president of the Olympic Federation of Ireland at an extraordinary general meeting of the organisation in Dublin on Thursday evening.
Walsh has been an OFI board member for the last seven years while he was also previously the chairperson of of Triathlon Ireland between 2013 and 2021.
He takes over from the outgoing Sarah Keane, who has been in the position since 2017, after seeing off the challenge of Canoeing Ireland chief executive Moira Aston.
"Thank you for placing your trust in me," Walsh said afterwards.
"During the past few weeks I got to know many of you in the federations and I look forward to taking up the position. I'd like to congratulate Moira on a positive and forward-looking campaign.
"We've had a really good Paris cycle and Irish sport has never been in such a good place. We have to do that again but better. Operationally, we have to be better than we've been in Paris.
"As part of that we have to work within the system, in a collaborative and positive way, to improve and challenge the system to be better than we were in Paris.
"Part of that is finding additional commercial funding to pay for all of that. A big of focus of this board is going to be on how we'll find the commercial funding to pay for what we want to do."
Sarah O'Shea was elected into the role of vice-president of the OFI.
Six candidates were elected to the non-officer positions, including Aston and Michelle Carpenter, who sat on the previous board.
They are joined by Cecile van Steenberge, Roddy Guiney, John Menton and John Feehan on a gender-balanced elected board.
In addition to these elected positions, the OFI board also features two independent directors in Nigel Cowman and Sean Hawkshaw, and a further two independent directors may be co-opted in the next Olympic cycle.
OFI Athletes' Commission chair Shane O’Connor also sits on the OFI board. Athletes’ Commission elections are due to take place in early 2025.
OFI chief executive Peter Sherrard will now combines his role with a new general secretary position for the purpose of international representation.
