The British Olympic Association (BOA) has announced that the new chair of the organisation will be Lord Colin Moynihan.

Moynihan, a silver medallist from the 1980 Moscow Olympics, recorded 28 votes and will serve for a three-year term. The only other candidate for the position, David Hemery – a gold medallist hurdler from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics – received 15 votes.

Moynihan was the favourite to win the vote, having put himself forward after Matthew Pinsent withdrew, citing a commitment to a media career.

The run-up to the election was surrounded in controversy, with allegations that the government attempted to persuade members of the National Olympic Committee to support Hemery, in an attempt to prevent Moynihan, a Conservative peer, and a vocal opponent of some of the government's sporting policies, being elected.

Commentators suggested that the government was concerned that two high profile Conservatives – Lord Moynihan and Lord Coe – would be at the heart of the London 2012 Olympics, as Moynihan will now take a seat on the organising committee (LOCOG).

Moynihan, a former sports minister under Margaret Thatcher, was a co-author of a recently published report, Raising the Bar, with Labour MP Kate Hoey, which strongly criticised the structure of sport in the UK, and urged dramatic reform.

Despite his recent insistence that he would step down from mainstream politics if elected, Moynihan will now have an influential position from which to lobby for changes to the system, which he described in an interview with Sports Management this week as "highly inefficient and costly".