Sebastian Coe has been elected president of the worldwide Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF.).
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Diack’s 16 years in charge of the IAAF will come to an end later in the day when either Sergey Bubka or Sebastian Coe replaces him as president after a ballot of the 214 national federations.
First elected an IAAF vice-president in 2007, Coe, who is also chairman of the British Olympic Committee, has matched his phenomenal record on the track with his achievements in politics and sports administration.
Diack has hailed the sporting pedigree of the two candidates: Bubka won Olympic pole vault gold in 1988 for Ukraine and was also a 10-time world champion, while Coe was a two-time Olympic 1500m gold medallist for Britain in 1980 and 1984.
The articulate Coe then steered the highly successful London Olympics, widely hailed as one of the best Games ever staged.
“He can do a great job”.
A worker uses a machine to clean the track at the iconic Bird’s Nest National Stadium as preparation for the upcoming 15th IAAF Athletics World Championship in Beijing Tuesday, August 18, 2015.
He is also expected now to be appointed as a member of the worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC), a role he is likely to take up just before next year’s Games in Rio de Janeiro.
He has bristled at suggestions that the sport’s governing body has been guilty of a cover-up following the potentially damaging revelations of leaked data from 12,000 blood tests. “If all this stuff is true it is a major crisis, much of which happened on the watch of the current president – and I’m sure he’s concerned”, he said.
The IAAF election, held in the lead-up to the world championships which start Saturday in Beijing, has been overshadowed by intense criticism of the world body following media reports that it has failed to act on evidence of widespread blood doping. “All the champions must be tested regularly and each country must have its own anti-doping body”.
Bubka has drafted in fellow Ukrainian sporting stars Andrei Shevchenko and Vitali Klitschko to help his final lobbying effort and both could be seen milling around the lobby of the congress hotel flanked by heavy security. The council will vote for a new president Wednesday.
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Coe has long campaigned for increasing the resources “in the battle for our sport’s integrity”, saying an external, fully independent anti-doping tribunal is a must.
