Sometimes you wish they were all back a little bit. Lamine Diack, for example, the deceased former president of the world athletics association who had been convicted by a court of law and who sometimes babbled confidential instructions into the microphone at congresses. Or Pierre Weiss, the former general secretary of the association, who in 2011 in Daegu called on the delegates to vote in an analogue way after the electronic voting system had indicated more votes cast than voters present. Good old track and field madness.
When Sebastian Coe was sent into his third and final term at the head of the world association at the Congress in Budapest on Thursday, the 66-year-old Briton had both the plenum and the processes under control. As always, he led the program as smoothly as if he were hosting a commercial for the new holiday resort on the north-west coast of Greece. He teased himself with his allegedly lengthy lectures. He felt “extraordinarily flattered” that 192 of the 195 delegates confirmed him in office (whereby, unlike in 2019, three associations awkwardly abstained). Thomas Bach, the current President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), once gave Coe the nickname Shakespeare because of this lithe manner. That was in 1981 when Juan Antonio Samaranch, the ironclad IOC patron, allowed athlete spokesmen like Coe and Bach to speak at the Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden. Good old Olympia autocracy.
Starting point of two extraordinary careers: Thomas Bach (left) and Sebastian Coe (centre) at the 1981 Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden.
(Photo: Laci Perenyi/Imago)
It was also the time that Coe and Bach were laying the rails on which their careers in sports politics would begin to roll. Bach, a master of fining and a connoisseur of paragraphs (which earned him the nickname Professor from Coe), swept to the post of IOC President in 2013. And Coe, these signs are growing, could now replace Bach when his term ends in 2025, at least on paper.
For a while it didn’t look like it, because when Coe was hoisted into the highest athletics office in 2015, a gigantic swamp spread out before him. Diack and his son Papa Massata had diligently siphoned off money from the sport, including from Russian athletes who had tested positive and were allowed to continue thanks to an alleged sale of indulgences.
Coe’s sporting career was soon hanging by very thin threads, because the lord had great difficulty distancing himself from the machinations of his former “spiritual leader” Diack. An email was leaked to Coe in the summer of 2014, well before he claims to have found out about the whole scandal. The attachments revealed how a Russian marathon runner was said to have been blackmailed under the Diacks. He forwarded the attachments to the association’s ethics officers at the time without reading them, Coe claimed before the British Sport Committee. He classified these statements as “misleading”. A flattering judgement.
Russia’s track and field athletes remain suspended because of the Ukraine attack – for the time being
In the end, it all boils down to the question of how he reads his emails, Coe tried to joke about it – with success. As a result, he distinguished himself, what a coincidence, as one of the few world association presidents who took serious action against Russia’s activities. The Russian Athletics Federation was suspended until recently because of the deep-rooted doping system, unlike other professional associations. And when most of these associations dutifully followed the IOC “recommendation” to rehabilitate athletes from Russia and Belarus in world sport, Coe’s track and field athletes dropped the next barrier: Because both countries are waging a war of annihilation in Ukraine, their athletes remain banned. Although Coe in Budapest did not rule out that this could change before the 2024 games in Paris.
Anyone who knows how allergic Bach is to anyone who doesn’t follow his, well, advice closely can guess why Coe only became a member of the IOC in 2020, five years after his coronation in athletics. If he were to run for Bach’s successor in 2025, he would be 69 – IOC members can currently be no more than 70 years old – but such paragraphs can usually be quickly adjusted in organized sport.
In 2025, Sebastian Coe could become IOC President.
(Photo: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)
And Coe is obviously willing, and that’s not just to be heard from the athletics community. Although he has recently repeatedly asserted that he has not yet dealt with it at all, you can believe him or not (recommendation of the house: better not!). But Coe did not want to rule out the candidature in Budapest either, and many of his interviews sounded like unsolicited applications: The IOC has the potential to be an extraordinary organization, but it must remain “autonomous and independent” and be aware of the balancing act “that we must sail through a highly complicated political landscape without losing our moral compass”. Freely translated: something like his association does.
That could definitely be interpreted as a tip in the direction of the creek. If the IOC under Bach did not refute one impression, it was that it was autonomous from interests, especially Russian ones.
On an equal footing with the aristocracy: Sebastian Coe (left) and Queen Elizabeth II (right) at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which Coe was in charge of organizing.
(Photo: Ulmer/Imago)
Admittedly, Coe is someone who doesn’t have to hold back when it comes to gliding smoothly through the world of organized sport. One who organized London’s 2012 Olympic bash, whose legacy is as controversial today as it was after many games; who was still paid as a consultant by the sporting goods company Nike when he was president of the world association; who missed out on urgent reforms to the federation, including a seriously working anti-doping agency (and who at the same time claims to have skipped sensitive e-mail attachments); showing the harshness against Russia, then in turn refers to the “complex world” when he is asked about Hungary as a location, which is also not unproblematic politically, where the World Cup competitions begin on Saturday.
One can assume that Thomas Bach also has his plans. It is currently unlikely that he could treat himself to another IOC term, contrary to the current regulations. There are increasing indications that he would have nothing against an IOC President, the first woman at the top of Olympus. But Coe has also retained his qualities: the power of words, the art of bluffing and, as in the past on the middle distance, a veritable stamina.