He's been tough on Russia, led the charge to put prize money in the pockets of athletes and pushed for a definitive but much-derided resolution in the longstanding debate over transgender athletes. (More Sports News)
Some might say Sebastian Coe's penchant for going agai💖nst the grain makes him more of a thorn in the side of the International Olympic C☂ommittee than an ideal candidate to become its next president.
The 68-year-old gold-medal runner who led the 2012 London Olympicಞ Committee and, now, the organization that governs global track and field, isn't so sure of 🌌that.
He's among seven IOC members running to replace Thomas Bach next year.
In his first interview since✤ announcing his candidacy, Coe spoke with The Associated Press about his past, his guiding principle that “if you get it right for the athle💮tes, you're going to get 80% of it right,” and his belief that his sometimes contrarian ways won't necessarily be a dealbreaker for him in the election in March.
“A lot of the criti🏅cism I've gotten from people in the sporting world, which I found a little depressing, was the assumption that good politics is about basically playing safe and ... not leaving the herd and sometimes taking risks,” Coe said.
“And bad politics is doing just that.”
If all that is true, then the former member of the Britis💃h Parliament will a🐓dmit to being bad at politics. But it's also a strategy that has defined his journey through sports.
Are the cards stacked against Coe?
There is a sense that the cards are stac🦂ked against Coe in the race for IOC 🌼president.
Last month, the committee released a clarifying document about its rules for potential candidates. Among its points was that IOC members can't serve past the age of 74. That,𒅌 and other directives in the letter, appear aimed at Coe, who would age out before the end of the president's traditional eight-year term.
Most of the issues could be overcome if the other members want him badly enou🅷gh.
Then, there's the issue of whether Bach, who has a heavy hand in guiding the IOC, supports him. How much that matters is a🎀 great unknown; the election of the president, unlike most issues undertaken by the IOC, is done by secret ballot.
Coe speaks warmly of the outgoing president and considers him a friend. When Coe gave the first speech by an athlete to the Olympic Congress back in 1981 (he p𒀰ressed to get four minutes at the lectern when ♒the leaders were only offering two) Bach, just winding down a successful fencing career at the time, helped him write it.
To this day, when they see each other, Coe cheekily calls Bach “Professor” and 🤡Bach, in return, calls Coe “Shakespeare.”
Coe's policies have not always fit with the IOC's
Coe has received great credit — or vicious blame — for many of th꧋e policies he's spearheaded since he became president of Wor✅ld Athletics in 2015.
He pushed to establish the Athletics Integrity Unit to take anti൲-doping matters out of the hands of track's leaders and have them resolved independently.
Along with that tough-on-doping st🦹ance came what amounted to a zero-tolerance plan for the Russians, who were held out of major international track meets because of the country's long-running doping program, which als𒈔o involved Coe's predecessor at World Athletics, Lamine Diack.
At about the time the doping issues were being resolved, World Athletics kept Russia on the sideline because of the war in Ukraine, a move Coe portrayed as one of fairness, not politics. The rest of the Olympic worldꦦ has been much more resistant to taking hard lines against Russia.
Coe's insistence on bringing clarity to the issue of eligibility for transgender athletes and those born with differences in sexual development, known𓆏 as DSD, has received more criticism than praise. Coe has portrayed it as a move to “protect the integrity of women's sport” in track and field.
Coe's most recent foray into norm-bending came when World Athletics announced itꦰ was awarding $50,000 to track and field's Olympic gold medalists in Paris.
Athletes scrapped for pennies then, and scrap for dollars now
The backlash came larg🦩ely from sports leaders who felt the money should be used for other purposes — like growing sports in poor countries — or from those whose own sports don't have the same resources as track.
Some of that criticism came from the very same pool of IOC memb♉e🧸rs Coe might need to win what could be the last big contest of his life.
But maybe not the toughest.
Coe grew up in northern England in the steel and coal towဣn of Sheffield. As he tells the story, if your name was Sebastian and you lived i🐭n Sheffield in the 1970s, you had to learn to fight or run, and so, the rest is history.
The up𝓀bringing gave him a first-hand view of the plight of🎃 athletes, even at the elite level, who he says still, to this day, have a “financial safety net that is paper thin.”
He was never a sꦦhoo-in. His decision to compete at the boycotted Moscow Olympics in 1980 when many British sat out was not universally popular. Neither was his stringent stance against Apartheid — he refused to race in South Africa in the 1980s.
His own conservative party toy👍ed with having him rem𒐪oved from the ticket.
“I have a lot of Indian heritage in🍃 my family,” said Coe, in explaining his feelings about Apartheid.
“I'd rather face th𝔉e wrat꧙h of Margaret Thatcher than the wrath of my mother sitting around the dining room table saying to me Are you demented?'
“I have always tended to stand my ground on things I truly ♓believe in,” Coe said.
