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≡ IOC PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ≡
Britain’s Sebastian Coe has done a lot of things in his 68 years, as a twice Olympic champion at 1,500 m, as the head of the British Olympic Association, the chair of the London 2012 organizing committee, as a member of Parliament and more.
So why does he want to be the President of the International Olympic Committee, leading international sport with war in Ukraine and the Middle East, superpower struggles everywhere and so many other problems?
He answered that with enthusiasm during a Monday online conversation (this is part one of two posts from this interview):
“It’s not a job. This is a passion. And it’s been a passion since I first watched the grainy moving images of an Olympic Games way, way back and it’s been a passion since the two athletes in my city of Sheffield came to the school with their medals and I joined the local athletics club at the age of 11.”
That encounter with Mexico City 1968 men’s 400 m hurdles bronze medalist John Sherwood and wife Sheila Sherwood, who took the women’s long jump silver, changed Coe’s future. And it still is as he takes another leap to lead the IOC:
“It’s a role. It’s a passion and do you think I could sit the dance out when that became available?
“No way. Absolutely no way. And look, I know it’s going be more than a passion. I have a clear vision. I think I have experiences within the Movement and actually, in a way, from the age of 11, I’ve been in training for this.
“I guess if I wouldn’t have looked at it this way, until the post became vacant, but I’ve been in training for this since the age of 11 and I’m one of six other candidates and they will all put their credentials forward.
“I’ve chaired a National Olympic Committee, I’ve been successfully to two Olympic Games. I’ve chaired a sizeable Olympic sport. I’ve won a bid and I’ve helped deliver an Olympic and Paralympic Games, and I’ve been in the sports marketing business for 30 years.
“I’ve been a government minister and I’ve been a Member of Parliament. I’ve been in the legislature, in the House of Lords. And it’s given me the most extraordinary access to some of the complexities and the people that I know, if I get the honor of this role, the people that I’m going to have to work alongside, internationally, in politics, I know. And I worked with before.”
That access and familiarity with some of the world’s power players is a noteworthy aspect of Coe’s candidature, and in a world going mad, could be crucial.
So what does he want to do? For Coe, it’s less about him and more about the talent in and around the Olympic Movement that can be unleashed to create new frontiers:
“The overwhelming vision here is about empowerment and enablement, and everywhere you look, there is the opportunity. To have a broader-based, collaborative approach to everything that we’re doing.
“With athletes, absolutely. Unambiguously at the heart of the movement. We’re an athlete-centric organization, but you know, what does that in reality mean? How do you enable the members?
“There are some very smart people sitting around that table. I know that, I sit next to them. We have the ability to shape and to form. And my role, if I’m given that opportunity, is just to release that talent.
“And to build teams, in a collaborative way that allows to deal with those challenges. In a way, it’s very easy to go into an immediate deep dive into what those challenges are. [But] let me be clear, I think the opportunities – off the back of those challenges – the opportunities are absolutely there.
“But you know, we will have to make some bold and some brave decisions. What we need is to do it in a way that harnesses the skills and the abilities. And I’m not the only one in that Movement that has experience and skills, and some in the Movement that I sit alongside, have skills that are that are more honed than mine. Just give those members the opportunity to do it.
“I’m not the fount of all wisdom or the fount of all managerial skills. I know what I do well and that’s build teams.”
Coe’s comment points to IOC members whose work outside of sport includes leaders from some of the most successful companies in the world, in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, in global finance, food, retail, communications as well as former senior governmental officials, including ministers and even a past head of state.
And Coe noted, there are many others willing and able to help, for a future which has warning signs ahead:
“This is a really, powerful, powerful Movement. And Paris was an extraordinary Games. Of course it was. And I think the brand, off the back of the Games is strong. But there are some challenges that sit there. We must look at what the commercial landscape looks like and it is a changed landscape.
“We need to look and have to understand the changing patterns of broadcast. And not the concept that there are going to be big broadcasters out there anymore. This is a very complicated and a slightly fractured landscape, but there are some massive opportunities, particularly to grow the Movement in some critical markets and in some spaces that actually drive Olympic values and recognition.”
Coe underlined the possibilities that sport – especially – brings:
“And what is it that we really should all be combining our forces behind? And that is, how does the Olympic Movement – and this is the same challenge for every International Federation – but how does the Olympic Movement remain relevant and salient and meaningful in the lives of young people? And particularly how does it become a conduit? How is it a transformative organization in their lives?
“You know, I am absolutely the living embodiment of watching something in my formative years, at an Olympic Games. Not in the stadium, but at an Olympic Games [on television] and joining an athletics club six or seven weeks later, and my journey was then on, I’d started the journey.
“We’ve got to do more. Absolutely. We have to do more, to coalesce around the transformative power of sport. It’s the most potent social worker in all our communities and used properly, it’s the deftest of diplomats (used properly). So that’s that’s how I see this.”
(Coming tomorrow: more on how the Olympic Movement can be better and who can help. And what Coe must ask the IOC membership for in order to win.)
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