Ed Warner: Seb Coe, Gary Glitter and the most powerful job in sport
Seb Coe, newly confirmed as one of seven candidates for the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is regarded as a serial vote winner. It wasn’t always thus.
Witness his single term in office as the MP for Falmouth and Camborne in Cornwall, ousted by Candy Atherton as Labour swept to power in 1997. At least he trounced Gary Glitter (see table below).
The IOC election will play to Coe’s strengths, however. Not an appeal to the masses this time, but a man- and woman-marking exercise, getting up close and personal with each of the 111 voting members over the coming six months.
Could this be a three-peat after winning similarly-structured votes in 2005 to host London 2012 and then in 2015 for the World Athletics presidency?
Some 43 per cent of the IOC electorate are women, but only one of the seven candidates. Kirsty Coventry has long been mentioned as a frontrunner, but the Zimbabwean swimmer and sports minister may find her youth, at 41, and nationality count against her.
There is unlikely to be a block female vote within the membership, but there may yet be block resistance to a woman president from within a deeply conservative Olympic hierarchy.
This conservatism has been overtly challenged by Coe over the past few years. As the consummate sporting insider, he has positioned himself not simply as an outsider in this race, but as a disruptor within the IOC.
World Athletics’ stances on Russian and trans athletes and its decision to pay prize money to gold medallists have appeared direct challenges to incumbent president Thomas Bach.
Coe’s comments on the integrity of female sport during the Paris 2024 boxing furore may well win him favour within a swathe of the IOC members.
“I did five years on the British Boxing Board of Control as an administrative steward, and I have daughters. How do you think I feel about this?”
Seb Coe
Coe’s camp has gingered up media comment in recent days about the eligibility rules being stacked against him. His age counts him out of a maximum 12 years in office.
His IOC membership is tied to his World Athletics role, but this must end in 2027. Britain has a full complement of ‘floating’ IOC members, preventing him being granted such status after he steps down from athletics.
But of course all this is irrelevant. If the IOC membership wants Coe, then it can simply adjust its requirements once he has been elected. It is after all a private body answerable only to itself. If anything, the suggestion that Bach has tried to reduce Coe’s chances will only have played into the Briton’s hands.
“For this new way of living, I, with my age, I am not the best captain. New times are calling for new leaders.”
Thomas Bach, aged 70. Seb Coe is 68 this month
One of Bach’s supposed manoeuvrings was to appoint outgoing British Olympic Association chair Hugh Robertson as an IOC member as recently as July – about the time he decided not to seek an extension of his own rule. Alongside Princess Anne, BOA president since 1983 and an IOC member since 1988, this filled both seats for independent individuals available to any single nation.
Robertson was a member of Coe’s campaign team for the World Athletics presidency, working the lobby for him in Beijing back in 2015. It is hard to believe he would have colluded in a clumsy attempt by Thomas Bach to block Coe’s route to power.
The Britons did find themselves on opposite sides of the recent bitter battle to run the National Lottery, though.
Robertson was chair of Camelot, which lost the contract after almost three decades. Coe was a non-exec director on the board of the Allwyn international lottery enterprise which prevailed. He was subsequently appointed Allwyn UK’s senior independent director. Who’s to say what impact this might all have had on relationships?
If the seven candidates to lead the IOC have any electoral nous, they will already have files on every one of the electorate and plans to corner them in the coming weeks. Allegiances and proclivities will be detailed; likely leanings carefully weighed.
You can be sure Coe’s team will already be on the case. After all, in his short time as an MP Coe was briefly a Tory whip and, as he once told me, the habits of the Whips’ Office die hard. Forget the outsider mantle he has donned – I wouldn’t bet against Seb.
Get the wind up #1
US sport has entered its annual overload zone. The NFL football season is now under way; MLS soccer’s Decision Day is on 19 October; the Nuggets meet the Celtics in the first NBA pre-season game on 4 October, albeit in the UAE; NHL hockey pre-season starts on the same day; and MLB’s World Series may stretch into the start of November if the contest goes to a full seven games.
A colleague is off to Chicago next week to catch the White Sox, the Blackhawks, the Cubs, the Fire and the Bears. All within the space of six days. Just a couple of weeks too early to catch the Bulls. Hoping for his sake that the Windy City isn’t as bitterly cold for the baseball as the Utilita Bowl in Southampton was for last week’s T20 international.
Summer sports really should be confined to summer. English cricket’s season doesn’t end until 29 September. Layer up!
Get the wind up #2
At last Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos may be closing in on a sporting success. Not Manchester United (a work in progress) but Ben Ainslie’s quest to win the Americas Cup.
Ineos Britannia is through to the final elimination competition next weekend for the right to challenge the holders, Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.
One reader writes: “It’s quite a spectacle, 10 ton yachts doing 50mph sitting on a tiny foil. Admittedly, it’s a very technical sport and arcane competition but all part of sport’s rich tapestry”.
See if you can make head or tail of it all at americascup.com
Houses of the Holy
To Twickenham for a meeting at the Rugby Football Union. First time since the ground was renamed Allianz Stadium.
Impressive re-badging of all signage, but the same old stadium awaiting a planned multi-year refurbishment. Hard to credit Clive Woodward’s hyperbolic criticism of the lucrative naming-rights deal that lies behind the name change.
“The RFU board sold its soul by renaming this historic stadium. Many, including myself, question why and how it has come to this.”
Clive Woodward
Call it Twickers, Headquarters, the Cabbage Patch or the Allianz Stadium. Up to you. Just think how jealous legacy chiefs must be having failed to secure an equivalent deal for the London Stadium, or Spurs’ owners still seeking a commercial partner for their Tottenham Stadium. A reported £100m-plus spread over 10 years is quite the deal.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com