8 PEOPLE
sportsmanagement.co.uk Issue 121 • 30 May 2016
“I care very little for the rights of athletes who have violated the sport. I care for the clean athletes, because I was one” Sebastian Coe, IAAF president S u b s e q u e n t l y, C o e ’ s predecessor Lamine Diack – whom he once labelled the sport’s “spiritual leader” – and his son were accused of blackmailing athletes who had committed doping offences. Even Coe was accused of wrongdoing when he was alleged to have discussed Eugene’s bid for the 2021 World Athletics Championships with a Nike representative via email before the town was selected as host (Coe was a paid ambassador for the sportswear giant which is based in Oregon). Nobody knows better than Coe that a lot can happen in a year, which begs the question: If he knew then what he knew now, would he have campaigned so hard? “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says in a semi-joking manner during the Telegraph Business of Sport Conference 2016 in London, before using a phrase from 1960s American business to deliver his assessment on where athletics is. “When you’re up to your arse in alligators it’s easily forgotten that the initial objective was to drain the swamp. I don’t need to tell anybody in this room that in the last few years – particularly in sport, but not uniquely in sport – there’s hardly an area of public life that hasn’t been challenged. The alligators have bitten,” he says. Athletics, he concedes, has been bitten “quite hard”, but Coe remains defiant that although revelations over the last few months have “sorely tested the trust of many of our stakeholder groups”, the sport is “still intrinsically strong”. BRUNO BEBERT / ASSOCIATION IMAGES
A
year ago Sebastian Coe was right in the thick of campaigning to become the president of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF). His campaign was a successful one, and culminated with his election during the IAAF World Championships last August. Coe smiled, expressed his excitement about the role he was going to play, and made the right noises about moving the sport into the modern era. Despite rumblings and reports about doping and corruption that have dogged athletics for some years, Coe couldn’t have possibly envisaged what can reasonably be described as a turbulent first few months in office. In November, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published its seismic report which alleged state-sponsored doping in Russia, resulting in the nation being banned from elite athletic competition and a deep investigation into RUSADA, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency.
Sebastian Coe was named president of the IAAF last year
RICK BOWNER / PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES
Athletes take part in the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Portland
Turn over: Why British Gymnastics won NGB of the Year