Lets Hope Lord Sebastian Coe Becomes the Next President
As current president of World Athletics there have been many positive changes in the sport under his watch
Let us hope that Lord Sebastian Coe becomes the next president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
In an absolute surprise to no one, Coe was elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations on August 19, 2015.
He succeeded Lamine Diack of Senegal, after a tumultuous end to his 16-year helmsmanship. During the campaign, Coe defeated Ukrainian Sergey Bubka for the position. Diack became a convicted criminal and spent time in jail.
Coe had his work cut out for him, as he took the position during the most troubling era in the history of the sport of athletics.
But like his stellar middle-distance running career, he often wins, by tactically making the right decisions.
Let’s look at some of what Coe has accomplished.
Protecting of the female category in the sport of athletics.
While other sports continue to have difficulty grappling with how to protect the female category, Coe sorted out the issue and put his foot down. The primary issue is about athletes who pass through male puberty, self-identifying as female or trans and competing against women, usually winning. Recently, this has come to an ugly head in boxing during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Coe saw the spectacle it was creating in his sport (athletics: running, and track & field) and put a stop to it. Stakeholders and the governance of the general sport were attempting to tackle the issue from the perspective of preventing the inclusion of biological males in biological female sports.
Coe turned the narrative around to that of protecting the female category. The question became “How do we protect the female category,” this change in tactic drew a hush over the cacophony. Oh, sure, it continues, but now the effort is so much less complex. The foundational guide to whether an athlete is female is knowing if they have passed through male puberty. When a person experiences male puberty, the competitive benefits (including high production of testosterone, can be life-long).
What plagued athletics and distracted from the sport has now magically gone away. Boxing, if it ever becomes organized again, should use the World Athletics model to define its management of the two primary gender categories.
The key here is in the World Athletics document titled: “C3.5A Eligibility Regulations Transgender Athletes” (a PDF located at www.worldathletics.org).
A key phrase: “They must not have experienced any part of male puberty either beyond Tanner Stage 2 or after age 12 (whichever comes first).”
After several years of attempted suits, appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights by athletes the issue is now mostly behind the sport.
Brand change
The International Association of Athletics Federations is a mouthful. The new name “World Athletics,” is streamlined, simple to digest and easier to work with in marketing.
Although age-60-plus athletes and fans may continue to utter “IAAF” from time to time, the new name is far superior.
FINA Fédération Internationale de Natation did the same thing to become World Aquatics as have other sports governing bodies.
With that brand change came a new logo. Although art is interpreted individually, the change provided the excuse to further market the brand, to celebrate and herald in the new era.
All other events owned or operated by World Athletics carry logos and branding that are related to the World Athletics logo above. This creates a constructive collaboration in identity, which is easily recognizable to fans.
Banning Russia and Belarus for systemic doping
Shortly after becoming president, Coe headed the move to ban Russia and Belarus from participating in any international competitions. This included the World Athletics Championships and the World Athletics Cross Country Championships. The IOC later moved to do the same thing, banning them from the Olympic Games.
The suspension was upheld and continued into 2020. Russia and Belarus are currently banned by both World Athletics and the IOC for their illegal incursion into Ukraine, which continues today.
Where Coe differentiates himself from the current IOC president Thomas Bach, is the German has waffled back and forth in his support of Russia and Russian athletes. Coe in contrast is decisive.
Bach has talked openly about armed conflicts happening throughout the world asking what is the difference here. But at the heart of the matter, waving off a major war where many people are dying is just bad show.
The creation of the Athletics Integrity Unit
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) was founded by World Athletics in 2017 to combat doping. The Monaco-based organization operates independently from World Athletics to fulfill World Anti-Doping Code requirements.
In 2023, the AIU announced new efforts to establish a "blood steroid passport" to better detect the presence of steroids, not exclusively, but more commonly used in sprinting and throwing events.
The AIU conducts in-competition and out-of-competition blood and urine testing of athletes. One area of apparent success is the Category-A nation list, which puts a focus on testing athletes out-of-competition. A primary focus has been on Kenya. Currently, 91 Kenyan athletes are banned for testing positive, evading testers, Athlete Biological Passport anomalies, tampering or Whereabout Program failures.
In 2022 10,686 samples were taken from 2770 athletes.
The names of athletes are published as soon as a provisional ban is handed down. The entire process is documented and made public. Subsequent results from the process are also published.
It is believed that after decades of no measurable or visible progress in the fight against doping, the AIU is making ground.
In December 2020, Coe said, “The AIU is not always going to be on everybody’s Christmas card list, but I do think that it has restored some confidence that we’ve got an organization that will fearlessly and ruthlessly weed out the cheats.”
“Reputation will not protect athletes.”
The AIU model should be adopted by other sports wishing to tackle the scourge of doping.
Cross country in the Olympic Games
Coe has lobbied on behalf of having cross country in the Olympic Games. When he first started with the Summer Games, he has now moved toward the Winter Games. Cross Country is typically run in autumn and winter. What was formerly an event where the best athletes in the world who competed in the 800-metre distance to the marathon and every distance in between, had narrowed to longer distance athletes and deep at the front were just East Africans. It was no longer global.
Starting with the 2019 Aarhus, Denmark World Cross Country Championships, Coe sought to have the event become more festival-like, with more difficult courses and creativity blended in. Otherwise, cross country was dying.
Cross-country racing was becoming a glorified road race on fast, well-groomed courses. In Aarhus, running over a museum roof and a spectator-friendly course was a game changer. In Bathurst, Australia during the 2023 championships, stacks of car tires in alternating lines created an obstacle that was visually interesting and competitively unique. Some athletes would hurdle the stacks, others snaked their way around. It became a talking point of great interest.
“My love for athletics began with cross-country. It would be hugely symbolic for this wonderful athletic discipline to return to the fold after a century, and for a new generation of runners to fall in love with the glorious challenge of running off-piste,” said Coe in 2020.
On August 1., this year he said, "For me, there's one really important element in this: I've always wanted to see cross-country back. It is obviously more at home in the winter. It is historically, traditionally, a winter sport and it really does give Africa an opportunity to be a really serious part of the Winter Games,” said Coe.
Otherwise, Africa and other warmer regions of the globe have little interest in the Winter Games. This is an Olympic coup of epic proportions, just waiting to happen. Additionally, there really are no athletics events in the Winter Olympics, although nordic skiing and biathlon closely relate.
The Winter Games in Vancouver would have worked well, as the city is located at sea level and the running of cross country would be in a climate that is temperate and conducive to running in cross country spikes. Meanwhile, the snow-required events took place in nearby mountains.
Letters written during the COVID pandemic
Coe penned two critical letters during the COVID pandemic. One was to the global athletics community reassuring that the sport would prevail and to thank stakeholders, athletes, and fans for support.
The letter was well received.
During the pandemic, people began to take up activities that were not organized. Running, cycling, hiking, and walking became commonplace again. Some athletes developed careers from the ashes of the lockdown including Rose Harvey Olympic marathon runner for Great Britain.
The other letter was to IOC president Bach, urging him to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games to 2021. While the Games were just not the same in 2021, the move allowed a number of athletes to qualify or re-qualify for the Games. Also, the lockdown allowed athletes to get back to training in the foundational aspect of the sport, without racing so often. Race results coming out of the lockdown had a jump, related to better training focus. Super shoes became a thing too and should not be overlooked.
Super shoes
Coe has supported super shoes, which can be seen as divisive.
Referencing Jesse Owens, lightweight, cotton track spikes, Coe feels that shoes manufacturers have always attempted to make progress.
They do change; however, the key issue is making the shoes available to all and to the general public. No one should wear a shoe that is exclusive to them — the playing field should be even.
However, athletes respond differently to super shoes. Some enjoy more benefits than others. For example, a hypothesis is that athletes who run with more of a shuffle-like gait receive less benefit than those who have a higher knee lift and harder landing and pushoff and therefore take advantage of the propulsion provided by the carbon plate.
This issue is not dead yet.
More…
In addition to some of the changes that have happened while Coe has been president during his (maximum allowed) three terms, he has supported athletes who which to take a knee during a ceremony.
While acknowledging injustices enacted against people is fair, the emphasis on protests seems to have died down. Not everyone needs to take a knee, cross arms, or salute when it happens.
Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan wore her hijab during the medal ceremony for the marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. She won gold. The hijab is banned in France. It may have been daring, but France is not a dictatorship, and it would not have been a positive moment for the country to arrest her for wearing the traditional material on her head — it was a harmless gesture.
Coe said, “bollocks.” in reference to the Enhanced Games, a preposterous project to allow dopers to compete in international competition.
Coe asked the AIU to investigate the use of cannabis rule. It is a banned substance on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of performance-enhancing drugs. While the recreational drug may assist in sports that require concentration (relaxing the athlete), it would do nothing to help a sprinter.
American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson was suspended just long enough leading up to the Tokyo Olympic Games to miss out, over a “drug” that would be a detriment for a sprinter.
Coe is decisive, and concise and seeks to make progress and change to benefit sport for the greater good. He has international experience being involved with the ethics committee of FIFA, is seeing out his three-term presidential role with World Athletics and was a conservative member of the British parliament from 1992 to 1997.
Sebastian Coe has done much good for the sport of athletics. As president of the IOC, he may be the one individual able to steer the organization away from its reputation as an alleged corrupt behemoth that has left a trail of white elephants and financial issues in its wake.