Online Reporter
More than 40 years after Sebastian Coe powered to his second Olympic 1500m title, he is still running hungry.
He’s in the gym most mornings at 6am, cranking out 40-50km a week on the treadmill, doing conditioning work or lifting weights, before meticulously recording his workouts in training diaries — just as he did during his golden heyday.
Even at 68 he is still chasing a fresh ambition: securing the most powerful job in global sport.
“I will work harder for this than I’ll probably ever work for anything,” Coe insisted in December when he launched his manifesto to be the next president of the International Olympic Committee. “It’s the dance that I just couldn’t sit out.” That dance, however, is about to get a lot more frenetic.
This Thursday at the Château de Vidy in Lausanne, Coe will get his one chance to address and impress the 108-member IOC electorate directly.
The stakes are nerve-flutteringly high.
Especially as Coe and the other six candidates only get 15 minutes to give their presentations. But Coe has form for delivering under acute pressure, both on the track and having led London’s successful bid for the 2012 Games, even though Paris and Madrid were initially seen as favourites.
Meanwhile, in the corridors and shadows of the 18th-century castle, a game within the game will also be played.
Palms will be pressed, small talk made, and confidences gained. Coe is especially good at this. But so is his chief rival, the 65-year-old Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC’s current vice-president.
Many eyes will also be on the final member of the “big three” — the Zimbabwean swimmer and the country’s Sports Minister Kirsty Coventry, who won seven Olympic medals and would be the first woman and the first African to get the job.
The 41-year-old also has the advantage of being the preferred candidate of the current IOC president, Thomas Bach.
It all makes for an election that one astute observer says resembles the Robert Harris papacy thriller, Conclave. On the surface there is a lot of talk of peace, respect, and love. But scratch a little deeper and the cardinals are plunging daggers into each other’s backs.
The comparisons with Conclave don’t end there, for this is also an election suffused with secrecy. None of the presentations in Lausanne will be filmed.
The IOC’s rules also prohibit candidates from holding public meetings “of any kind” to promote their bid or to criticise rivals. All that will be missing is the puff of white smoke. One candidate is rumoured to have been so worried about falling foul of the IOC’s directive regarding the use of photographs of other people in their manifesto — “as this would give the perception of support”—that” they resorted to using AI images.
It’s little wonder, therefore, that so few people are willing to speak on the record about what they think is really going on inside such an important race.
But in private they are playing informed guessing games about the jostling and machinations to succeed Bach, who has been in power since 2013, when the election takes place in March — and agreeing on more than you might think.
The first area of consensus? That Coe has had a good campaign. It is said that he has spoken to almost every voter in person over the past two years, while his manifesto uses several “what you have told me” sections to emphasise he is listening to the IOC members’ concerns. His overall message? The organisation must be more open in its decision-making process and be willing to change.
The second? Barring an unforeseen development, it is really between the big three. Some in French circles are pushing the idea that David Lappartient is gaining ground. However, most observers believe that the Paris 2024 president, Tony Estanguet, who has just become an IOC member, will have a much better shot in eight years’ time.
Elsewhere Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, whose manifesto pushes the idea of using sport as a tool for peace and the need to do far more to prevent abuse, is well liked but up against it.
Morinari Watanabe, the amiable Japanese businessman who runs international gymnastics, also has his supporters; his plan to stage the Olympics simultaneously in five cities on five continents has raised more eyebrows than Simone Biles’ triple-twisting double backflip.
The biggest outsider of all, meanwhile, is the Swedish-Briton Johan Eliasch, the president of the international ski and snowboard federation and former CEO of the sports brand Head.
But his slick manifesto, which stresses his business and environmental interests, has been well received. His big idea? To rotate the Winter Games among a select group of venues and to conserve a rainforest area the exact size of each Olympic host city.
A third area of agreement?
That while Coventry should have a shot at being the first woman to run the IOC, her campaign is yet to ignite. Her manifesto was seen as bland, and it doesn’t help either that she has done very little campaigning. She is well liked and has Bach’s silent patronage. But she has work to do.
Perhaps most significantly of all, there is a growing sense that the IOC is increasingly likely to play it safe given the turbulent political currents across the globe.
After all, whoever gets the job will need the political skills and diplomatic nous to work with Trump in the build-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Games — as well as possibly Vladimir Putin if Russia is one day brought in from the sporting cold. If that is true it is undoubtedly good for Samaranch Jr and Coe.
But for good measure the next IOC president will also have to renegotiate around a billion dollars’ worth of TV contracts, find new ways to bring in sponsorship, and decide the 2036 Summer Olympics hosts. — The Guardian/Sports Reporter.
