A man on a Mission

His alarm call punctures the early morning silence and Sebastian Coe wonders for a moment where he is. Another day, another country, another hotel. It is not yet 6am and the president of World Athletics reaches for his gym gear, slips his key card and phone into a back pocket and makes for the elevator. Last week it was Monaco, London and Frankfurt. This week Los Angeles, Nairobi and Apeldoorn. Another city, another treadmill. Forty summers have passed since Coe retained his 1500m Olympic title in Los Angeles. He is 68 but still running. Both for fitness and for high office.

In a couple of weeks he will learn if it was worthwhile, the exhausting schedule he has given himself in his quest to beat six rival candidates to the most powerful post in global sport, President of the International Olympic Committee. He won’t look beyond the March 20 vote in Greece, his eyes fixed firmly on a prize he refers to as “the big one”. If success was measured purely in hours worked he would be a shoo-in. There is more to it than that, of course. But this is his way. He has never been one for shortcuts.

“I tend to think a bit like when I was an athlete,” he told German newspaper ‘Suddeutche Zeitung’. “I would say, okay, another 20 days to go. And that’s a mountain of training sessions. I’m old fashioned about these things. It’s not about emails or presentations or glossy brochures that may or may not be written by you or even read by you before you hand them on. I write everything myself – I’m crap at delivering other people’s speeches. It just doesn’t work. It’s about human contact and travel. And it’s what I’ve always done.”

LISTENING AND TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD

Which is why he has spent the past fortnight constantly on the move between airports and hotels, meetings and speaking engagements. He has met face-to-face with IOC members, he even made it to the Oscars. He has given interviews on Africa’s role in the Olympic movement, India’s bid to host the Games, integrating athletes as partners in the IOC, modernising the commercial model and, above all, putting sport first.

He remembers back to 2004 and 2005 when London, with him at the helm, bid to host the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. How he worked himself to the bone and it paid off. “This feels quite reminiscent,” he says. It is 35 years now since he hung up his spikes yet the competitor in him remains undimmed. “It’s a race,” he told Italian daily ‘Corriere della Sera’. “And I’ve always been pretty good at races.”

And more besides. Be it as an elected member of parliament, chair of the British Olympic Association, chair of the London 2012 organising committee or head of WorldAthletics, Coe has always led from the front. “I’ve been at the delivery point of everything I’ve done,” points out a man who, because his mantra is to focus only on matters he can control, works overtime to ensure he is on top of as much as is humanly possible.

“I have a sports marketing agency and I’ve been a government minister”

“I have chaired commissions and sat on executive boards, but crucially I have delivered the Games. I have run a National Olympic Committee. I’ve run one of the largest sports, I have a sports marketing agency and I’ve been a government minister.”

Coe has built his reputation on being clear, decisive and unambiguous as a leader, of not talking the talk until he is prepared to walk the walk, sure in his mind that the route chosen is the right one. As leader of World Athletics, he took a firm stance on Russia, first over doping, then the invasion of Ukraine. He oversaw the creation of the Athletics Integrity Unit, widely regarded as the gold standard for anti-doping.

He put his head above the parapet to protect the female category over athletes with differences of sexual development, arguing calmly that “our guiding principle must be science: it is biology, not gender identity, that decides who should compete against whom.”

OLYMPIC PRIZE MONEY AGAINTS THE WISHES OF BACH

He sanctioned the payment of Olympic prize money to athletes in track and field, against the wishes of outgoing IOC President Thomas Bach, to counter the threat of losing talent to rival sports, particularly in the US, that remunerate generously.

These are thorny issues Coe has been prepared to grasp and his pledge is to continue in that vein – perhaps most notably with his plan to recognise the value of athletes by making them ‘partners’: involving them in decision making and helping them to make more of themselves commercially.

This is a significant departure. Coe gives as an example the first World Athletics Ultimate Championship, to be staged next year in Budapest, to which the governing body will fly the stars of the sport with their social media managers. They will then create content in support of their sponsors. And World Athletics will provide videos, footage and whatever else they need to grow their image.

Should he be elected, Coe says the “five-ring brand”, while always respected and protected, needs to help athletes open up “countless” new commercial opportunities for them. Additionally, he pledges to give sports fans “what they want, when they want it and, critically, where they want it.”

“You have to have an audience-first approach”

Talking to ABC Australia’s Tracey Holmes he said: “We’ve got to modernise the revenue model. We’ve got to turn transactional sponsorships into collaborative partnerships and we’ve got to recognise that you have to have an audience-first approach.”

“That’s not to say you shape everything around the likes or dislikes of 15-year olds, but you have to listen to what the audience are telling you. I’m not sure we’re doing that as well as we could be.” His candidacy, he explains, is very simple. “It’s about making sure we understand the assets and the value that we have in the movement, that we protect them fiercely, that we drive growth opportunities.”

Coe is one of two Olympic greats running for the presidency, along with Kirsty Coventry, Africa’s most decorated Olympian. Only he, however, has organised and delivered a Games. “I see the world as a candidate through every one of those prisms,” he says of his decades spent chairing the BOA, delivering London 2012 and serving as president of World Athletics. “Not because I am sort of trying to understand what that landscape is. I’ve actually operated in that landscape and had to deliver in that landscape, and I think that’s what makes me different.”

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