Sebastian Coe has been portrayed by some as a potential successor to Thomas Bach as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) but the athletics legend suggested to AFP it is out of his hands.
Bach, who like Coe is an Olympic gold medallist, will oversee the Paris Olympics that start on Friday but is due to step down next year having served the maximum two terms since being elected in 2013. There have though been calls from some IOC members that Bach should seek a third term, although that would require a change in the Olympic Charter.
The two-term limit was one of the anti-corruption reforms imposed following the Salt Lake City scandal in the 1990s.
Coe, who at 67 is three years younger than Bach, has been credited with transforming the image of the sport since being elected World Athletics president in 2015.
“Look, I think there’s a huge deal of uncertainty about what is happening in Lausanne (the site of the IOC headquarters) at the moment,” Coe told AFP in an interview this month when asked about whether he would run to be IOC president.
“I think those questions are probably best directed at other people.”
The Briton, whose third and final term as athletics chief ends in 2027, had his work cut out when he took over WA. His predecessor Lamine Diack was embroiled in a cover-up of Russian doping cases in exchange for bribes and was sentenced by a French court to four years in prison, of which two were suspended, and fined 500,000 euros ($544,000). Coe, who was a Conservative Party lawmaker from 1992-97, said his close friend William Hague, Britain’s former foreign minister, told him that in comparison to other jobs the head of Monaco-based World Athletics would be “a calmer, quieter atmosphere”.
“I did remind him not long ago over supper that that quieter period ended up with me sitting in a Monaco police station for five hours, where my predecessors had gone and subsequently been arrested,” Coe said.
He insisted that he did not go for the World Athletics top job because he was sure he would get it.
“I’ve never done things because I think there’s any certainty of outcome,” he said.
“I’ve tended to do things that I’ve found interesting or the need to do them.”
Coe, who won the 1500m Olympic title twice in 1980 and 1984, has earned credit for taking a hardline stance in banning Russian and Belarusian athletes in response to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Equally he attracted flak from some fellow federation presidents for taking the revolutionary step of saying Olympic track and field gold medallists will receive $50,000 prize money.
However, Coe says while such decisions are partly informed by his “moral compass”, they are not taken unilaterally.
“They are not individual long runs for hope,” he said. “You know, I have a Council.
“One thing about our sport it is properly governed. It’s probably better governed than any sport out there.
“Both those decisions that we made were unanimously supported and in part co-created by a very active Council.”
Coe says his Council members – he is proud that they are gender-balanced at 13 each – are extremely well-qualified, both in terms
of athletics and also in having served their countries in other areas.
“A large chunk of the Council is made up of Olympic champions, world champions, world record holders.
“So they’re not empty suits sitting around a council chamber. They really actually understand the nature of the sport.
“We’re the only international federation with an entirely gender-balanced council.
“Already you can see that the quality of the discussion and the subsequent decision is at a higher level than it’s ever been on that Council.”
