The two-time Olympic gold medalist, who has been the President of World Athletics since 2015, wants to engage the young, so that they too can dream of becoming Olympians.
Like Kirsty Coventry, Sebastian Newbold Coe, 68, is a decorated athlete and breaker of world records. He is the only man to have won Olympic gold in the 1,500 meters in consecutive Games (1980 and 1984). During his career he broke 12 world records, three of them within a span of 41 days in 1979.
His record in the 800 meters stood for 16 years worldwide and still stands in his home country, the UK, where he was elevated to the peerage in 2000, by Prime Minister Tony Blair, becoming Baron Coe of Ranmore, and was knighted in 2006. In 2013 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour, for his services to sport and for the London Olympics (2012).
In 1992, soon after retiring from middle-distance running, he served a five-year term in Parliament, representing Falmouth and Camborne for the Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories) and spent a year as Assistant Whip for the Treasury. The rise of the man who would ennoble him, Blair, drove Coe out of Parliament (and Prime Minister John Major out of Downing Street) in 1997. Coe then became Chief of Staff to William Hague, leader of the Conservatives. He returned to Westminster in 2000, now in the House of Lords, thanks to his peerage.
Coe was the first Chairman of the FIFA Ethics Committee (2006-09). He was prominent securing the Summer Games for London (2012) and then served as Chairman of the London Organising Committee. He afterwards served as Chairman of the British Olympic Association and has since 2015 been President of World Athletics, the worldwide governing body for track and field, then known as the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF).
In 2018, Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee came to doubt his testimony from December 2015 on Russian doping scandals. Dave Bedford, former race director of the London Marathon, had given contradictory testimony, stating that Coe had been sent an email with information that he claimed before the committee not to have known.
These days, apparently, the current IOC President, Thomas Bach, is campaigning against Coe. Bach was unhappy with World Athletics for its plan to distribute monetary prizes to its Olympic gold medalists – a plan that was carried out. Incidentally, the International Boxing Association (IBA) carried out a similar plan, also to Bach’s displeasure. For Bach, according to Francs Jeux, prizes should come not from federations but from governments, partners or private organizations.
Coe has also criticized the very election he is running in – indeed, criticized it just the other day. He believes, for instance, that candidates should have more than 20 minutes to make their pitch before the IOC’s membership. As the Gulf Times reports, he is calling for “more access to the members, more transparency.”
Coe was born in Hammersmith (London), grew up in Sheffield, and received his first coaching from his father, Peter Coe. He studied economics and social history at Loughborough University.
Like Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., Coe sees the IOC’s age limits as outdated, but age plays a role in his thinking. “My instinct,” he told SportsIn last November, “is that the Games are not doing enough to engage the next generation – to capture the imaginations of young people so that they dream of becoming Olympians. We are in danger of focusing too sharply on debates that detract from the core aspirational message – Faster, Higher, Stronger Together. Although we are witnessing greater geopolitical instability, it is essential that the remorseless drive for diversity be understood, leant into and embraced.”
Read on:
