Former Tory MP and double Olympic champion, Sebastian Coe has been elected President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) after beating Ukraine’s pole vault legend Sergey Bubka in a ballot of the governing body’s 50th Congress.
Coe will officially take over the reigns from outgoing president Lamine Diack who has run the body for the last 16 years at the end of the month after winning 115 votes to Bubka’s 92 at the election in Beijing and the Briton will immediately be confronted by barrage of doping scandals that have surfaced in recent months.
“For most of us here, we will conclude (that) the birth of our children are the biggest moments in our lives,” said Coe, whose initial term will be for four years. “But I have to say (that) being given the opportunity to work with all of you in the future of our sport is probably the second biggest and momentous occasion in my life.”
Former Olympic pole vault champion Bubka congratulated Coe on his victory and was later elected one of four IAAF vice-presidents. “I know athletics will grow and become stronger,” Bubka said. “I am a happy man because I love athletics. I will continue to serve athletics with passion. This is my life.”
Outgoing president Diack said he was delighted to finally have a successor and in particular one who had dedicated his life to the sport. “The white-haired generation has done what it could, and now over to the black-haired generation,” the 82-year-old Senegalese said.
Coe has aggressively defended IAAF’s record on doping over the last three weeks. He had said the organization had “led the way’’ on out-of-competition testing and laboratories, and introduced blood passports in 2009 to help weed out the cheats. Coe has previously said that under his leadership the sport would move towards setting up its own anti-doping agency.
In speeches to delegates before and after Wednesday’s vote, the former politician did not mention doping once, saying only “trust and integrity’’ were the twin pillars of the sport. He promised delegates he would empower federations to deliver the kind of sport they wanted, not dictate from its centre.
The new IAAF president also reiterated his promise to hand each of the 214 federations a development grant of 200,000 dollars in each Olympic cycle of four years. He will also engage with governments to help utilize their funding to help athletes.
Coe said the financial acumen he gained in heading the London 2012 Olympics’ organizing committee would stand him in good stead as he seeks to bring new sponsorship to the sport. “All my life I have fought for athletics. I have fought to bring it to my country, I fought to be as good as I could, I fought to take it to young people. “I fought to make my sport as strong as it could be. But I have never done it on any one of those occasions alone. I have always done it together with you my friends. “I will always be in your corner, your fight is my fight.”
