Coe vs Bubka: On your Marks… The Race is on for the IAAF Presidency – By Michael Pirrie

The charm offensives will continue over the next few days in a final intense burst of private meetings and lobbying activity in Beijing in discrete locations, as well as in number crunching and triangulation to confirm the voting intentions that will ultimately seal the fates, legacies and careers of the two champion athletes.

The implications for the Olympic Family – athletics was the foundation sport when the Olympic Games were revived in 1896, and is still the biggest sport and draw card at each Olympic Games – has brought overtones of an Olympic bid city race to the contest.

If so, and if recent Olympic bid city success patterns prove relevant, the IAAF voters, who include several IOC members and National Olympic Committee officials, may decide to opt for the candidate with the safest pair of hands and represents the lowest risk. Just like Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022.

This could prove decisive for Coe in the current era of global sporting austerity and uncertainty. Both athlete-candidates have outstanding CVs and are used to campaigning at the highest levels.

They have been meticulous in their election strategy planning, approaching the task with the same discipline and dedication that underlined their sporting campaigns and success as athletes, and then building on this sporting success to blaze trails into politics, commerce, business and international relations and other activities.

Few, if any candidate, however, could be as well prepared as Coe is to serve his sport at this particular time. He seems almost uniquely qualified to lead the federation, especially in meeting the twin challenges of making the sport more relevant to the next generation of young people and to sponsors, the energy supply and lifeblood of modern sports and federations.

Coe has continued to set new records for an athlete since retiring from the sport professionally, with a series of firsts in athletic and sports administration that have provided him with experience and knowledge of the requirements needed to run a major global sporting federation and operation like the IAAF in this new era of social and digital sports communications, marketing and events.

Tellingly, Coe is the first athlete to lead a successful Olympic Games bid committee and the organising committee for the Olympic Games, the world’s biggest and most complex peacetime event and piece of sports and project management in the world.

If the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair proved to be the decisive factor in London winning the historic 2012 Olympic bid cycle, supported by Coe, Sir Keith Mills, Dame Tessa Jowell, Ken Livingstone and Sir Craig Reedie, then Coe was the lynchpin in delivering those Games, regarded by many experts as the best planned and organised Olympic Games ever staged.

It is difficult to overestimate the central role Coe played in leading the delivery of the London 2012 Games on time, on budget and as promised to the IOC .

Brand Coe was even the secret weapon wheeled out by Locog’s commercial department to get vital Games sponsors over the line, ensuring the necessary revenues and goods and services were always available when needed for the organising committee to move the Games on to the next level of planning.

Coe’s capacity to attract commercial interest, confidence and commitment to his projects and committees as a commercial rain maker, is a special quality needed by all international federation leaders and will be essential for the IAAF and its national federation members to bring in new partners to grow the sport in the increasinglycluttered and competitive sports marketplace.

Coe proved he can deal with all sections of international society – from Heads of State and Royalty through to local community groups, the military and athletes – over seven long years of planning for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

His finely tuned diplomatic and speech making skills helped to generate universal support in the General Assembly of the United Nations for the British Government’s Olympic Truce programme of international sports-related aid and development.

The package included the London 2012 International Inspiration programme championed by Coe and his deputy chair of the London Games, Sir Keith Mills, which provided structured sports experiences and opportunities linked to education for millions of children around the world.

Coe stamped his own trademark on the London 2012 Games, as “the Athletes Games” because of the culture that Coe established within the oranising committee, placing the needs of the athletes at front and centre of planning of service levels and conditions for the athletes.

The athletics programme at the Olympic stadium, in the Olympic Park in east London, was one of the best Olympic athletic competitions ever staged.

Coe also worked feverishly to ensure the athletics track and field facilities at the Olympic stadium were protected after the Games as a legacy for the sport for decades to come, as promised to outgoing IAAF president Lamine Diack. Thiw will enable the world’s best athletes to return to London and the Olympic stadium for the 2017 IAAF World Athletic championships, which Coe also played a key role in bringing to the capital.

While a doping controversy has recently dominated the final stages of the election campaign, IAAF voting delegates are now studying the election manifestos of each candidate in great detail, which could also give Coe the edge.

Although Coe and Bubka address similar issues in their manifestos, Coe’s proposals look more focused and pragmatic towards some of the most pressing challenges.

For example, Coe knows that the huge sell out crowds that filled the London 2012 Olympic stadium to capacity for the athletics to watch Bolt and other household names are not representative of the health of the sport outside the Olympics, as seen by big swathes of empty seats at major athletic events.

This has prompted Coe to recommend the use of grants to national athletic federations to help develop the sport at the grass roots level, adapted to local sporting and community conditions – a measure likely to be popular  with local athletics officials and communities – and IAAF voters.

If so, this and other initiatives may be enough, in boxing parlance, to give Coe a victory on points.

Given the extraordinary sporting pedigree of Coe and Bubka, however, it might have been more fun instead to have the pair face off in a decathlon of events over two days in the Birds Nest for the right to become president.

May the best athlete win!

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Michael Pirrie led the international media relations and communications programme for the London 2012 Olympic Games Bid Committee (2003-2005, and Executive Advisor to the London 2102 Olympic Games Orhanising Committee and its chairman, Sebastian Coe (2006-2013).

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