Seb Coe roots for athlete-focused leadership ahead of IOC elections

“(American track and field legend) Carl Lewis was magnificent (at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics) and I am not surprised that he inspired a whole generation of people to take up the sport.

I had my role models going back many years who inspired me to take up the sport, so we know the impact that athletes have and we (IOC) must remain an athlete-focused organisation,” Coe, who broke multiple world records and won four Olympic gold medals in a career spanning 13 years (from 1977 to 1990), told journalists drawn from the Association of International Sports Press (AIPS) in a video conference call on Friday.

IOC members will elect a new president on March 20 during the Olympic body’s 144th session in the Greek town of Pylos. IOC members from Kenya - rugby star Humphrey Kayange and distance running legend Paul Tergat - will attend the session.

Athletics legend Kipchoge Keino from Kenya is one of the 39 honorary members of the IOC.

Seven candidates will battle it out to win over votes from 109 IOC members in a secret ballot expected to yield a bruising battle, given the rich profiles of the contestants.

The choice of the host city promises no favours to the candidates.

According to ancient Greek history, Pylos is remembered for the Battle of Pylos, the Peloponnesian War that pitted the two leading Greek city states of Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies in a contest for supremacy in Greece, and in the eastern Mediterranean.

Olympic legend, renowned businessman, sports administrator and politician Lord Sebastain Coe retired from athletics at the age of 34 in 1990 to pursue political career.

As a Member of Parliament (MP) he served in the House of Commons from 1992 to 1997. From 2000 to 2022, he was a Member of the British House of Lords.

He has had a decorated career in sports administration. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as chairman of the British Olympic Association.

In 2012, Coe led a successful bid for the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, and went on to serve as chairman of the 2012 London Olympics Organising Committee.

He has been President of World Athletics since 2015. Elected as an IOC Member in 2020, and his candidature is supported by his function within an International Federation, in his case World Athletics.

What is has motivated him to run for IOC presidency?

“No one person motivated me to run. It was only really on the last day (of the 2024 Olympic Games) in Paris that any of us knew there would be that opportunity and when you are the federation president of the central sport at an Olympic Games, you tend to be focusing on everything related to the delivery of your sport.

In Paris, I was helping to deliver a magnificent track and field championship, and it was only after the last day that IOC President Thomas Bach announced that there was going to be a vacancy, and that’s when I thought long and hard about it.

This is a role I feel I have been pretty much in training for most of my life, whether as an Olympic athlete, president of a National Olympic Committee, the president of a championship bid, president of an Olympics Organising Committee in London, and as president of World Athletics.

Along the way I was a member of parliament, and as somebody who has been in sports marketing for 30 years, I thought long and hard about it, consulted my family, and I decided that I have the competence and track record to sensibly offer my services.

This is a judgement that ultimately the IOC members will make,” Coe, who won gold medal in 1,500 metres at the 1980 Olympic Games held in Moscow and at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, said.

He is advocating for strong regulations to govern issues of gender in sport.

“My position is the position I have held and delivered through World Athletics. This is a clearly complex societal issue. We are not hermetically sealed in sports, and we have to understand the morals of the day, and some of the cultural influences.

I have ethnic influences from India and other parts of the world, and I don’t see the world from the wrong end of the telescope in Europe. I have a very much global view.

The guiding principle for me is the integrity of the competition and the promotion and integrity of women's sports. If we lose sight of that and we don’t have unambiguous policies, we will get into difficult and dangerous territory.

We want young girls entering the sport to feel that there are no barriers to what they can do. That is why the regulations we have agreed around DSD (Differences in Sex Development) and transgender are important and non-negotiable,” Coe said.

“As a potential president of the IOC, I want to work very closely with the stakeholders – the International Federations, National Olympic Committees, broadcasters, media, and athletes who are an essential part of this journey.

Each of these stakeholders has its interdependencies, which depend on clarity of thinking from the largest and most influential sporting organisation in the world, which is the IOC.

We should be taking thought leadership positions and establishing guidelines for International Federations and NOCs, and that’s what they have told me they want. I have served in all these capacities and I know what the challenges are.”

Drawing from his own experience with Great Britain at the 1980 Olympic Games, which many countries, led by USA, boycotted in protest at Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he believes sport can overcome the threat posed by war and social instability.

“Throughout different generations, sports has been through the complexities of cold war, conflagrations, social and cultural challenges and it is not any different now.

There are a lot of what abouts, but the principles remain that you can only deal with what you have in front of you clearly and concisely,” he said.

In 1980, the British Olympic Association faced a lot of pressure from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government to boycott Moscow Olympic Games and a vote in the House of Commons supporting a boycott but the association, under the leadership of Dennis Follows, sent athletes to the games.

“It was slightly different. We didn’t march in the opening ceremony, and we didn’t have the national flag, but we went to the Games.”

He hopes to build on reforms he initiated at World Athletics through Athletics Integrity Unit.

“I delivered the first out-of-competition testing system in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 1980s, so this is familiar territory and of course, the Athletics Integrity Unit that was part of reforms that we drove through shortly after I became president.

The centerpiece of those reforms was the Athletics Integrity Unit, which is independent.

Most people regard it to be the gold standard, and it is not just about anti-doping but also integrity. For me, this is non-negotiable. We must have free and fair competitions,” Coe, who set nine outdoor and three indoor world records in middle-distance track events during his career, said.

In 1980, Coe held all four middle-distance world records—the 800m, 1000m, 1500m, and mile.

He is open to a broad conversation around having prize money at the Olympic Games, and an inclusive solution to resolve governance issues facing International Boxing Association so as to have boxing on the programme of events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

“Boxing is a very important Olympic sport, so we have to make sure that sport is present at the Olympics for as many years as we can maintain that.

The sport has to be delivered in a way that fulfills all the demands of integrity, and the guiding principle for me is that an International Federation should be the guardians of that sport.

I recognize that this is a complicated landscape, and boxing has given a lot to the Olympic Movement. Mohamed Ali and George Foreman were both Olympic champions, and it is important that we resolve the problems quickly,” he said.

On March 20, Coe will take on Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, Frenchman David Lappartient, Swedish-Briton Johan Eliasch, Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs whose father once led the organization, Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe, and Morinari Watanabe from Japan.

The IOC president serves for a term of eight years and can be renewed once for four years. Bach was elected on September 10, 2013 at IOC’s 125^th session in Buenos Aires.

According to IOC website, 62-year-old Prince Feisal of Jordan is currently a member of the IOC, president of the Jordan Olympic Committee, and is also chairs IOC's Prevention of Harassment and Abuse in Sport Working Group.

He is also the vice-chairman of the IOC's Women in Sport Commission and sits on several other commissions of the IOC.

Lappartient, 51, is president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), chairs IOC Esports Commission, and is also president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee. He is a French politician.

Eliasch, 63, is president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS). The Swedish-British businessman, investor, and environmentalist became an IOC member six months ago.

Samaranch, 65, is a Spanish sports executive and financial analyst. He sits in IOC’s Executive Board by virtue of being one of the two vice presidents of the IOC.

He is the longest-serving member among the candidates. He is the son of Juan Antonio Samaranch (1920-2010), who served as the seventh president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001.

Kirsty Coventry, 42, is the youngest among the candidates seeking to succeed Bach. Currently serving as Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation in the Zimbabwean government, she is aiming to become the first female and first African to lead the IOC.

She is IOC Executive Board member and is one of Africa’s most-decorated Olympians. In 2028, she was elected the chairperson of the IOC Athletes' Commission, the body that represents Olympic athletes globally.

Japanese businessman Watanabe, 66, is one of two candidates from Asia seeking to replace Bach as IOC president.

He is the president of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). He has served as general-secretary of the Japan Gymnastics Association and sat on multiple committees of the Japanese Olympic Committee ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games.