The dirtiest man in clean sport has made Russia his personal enemy

Sebastian Coe’s scandal-plagued career has not stopped him from deciding who deserves a place in global athletics What is it with British ‘knights of the realm’ that they seem to be forever mired in corruption, scandal, and disgrace? Former Olympian Sebastian Coe can never avoid all three of those ‘specialities’, yet like his fellow Lords, Ladies, Sirs, and Dames, he appears to think that sitting high upon that horse means that he can dole out moral judgment or collective punishment. And Russia is still in his sights. Who is Seb? A double Olympic champ over 1,500 m in 1980 and 1984, Coe came through the ‘unusual’ training system of Loughborough University’s George Gandy. Gandy was ‘modernizing’ strength and conditioning for the university rugby team and notorious for his adherence to advances from the US, which reportedly included substances that would subsequently be outlawed. Coe went on to translate track success to business and political wins, including nabbing a parliamentary seat for Britain’s Conservatives in 1992. He was appointed, or anointed, a Life Peer in 2000 and became Lord Coe. Yet, whether on the track or off, scandal seemed to follow the London-born man. He returned to global prominence when the Olympic Games were returning to the British capital. The head of the London 2012 Bid Committee and then the London Organizing Committee, he outraged many with his backroom dealing and ability to walk in grey areas to get the games to London. These grey areas included bribes. Read more Russia’s football exile is ending – but Europe may not survive the comeback After the games, he jogged off to be elected head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics) in 2015. And it was at that moment that any pretense of his being in it for the sake of sport disappeared. First of all, he had to be forced to drop his $120,000-a-year gig as Nike ambassador role, despite heading the global governing body for athletics.

As if that wasn’t enough, he then would lobby for the 2021 World Athletics Championships to be held in… Eugene, Oregon. OK, that needs an explainer... of exactly six words – Eugene is where Nike is based. Money talks loudly for Seb. I think you see where this is going. Seb is about as clean as a piglet that’s been rolling about in a pigsty that hasn’t been cleaned in a decade. And that’s before addressing his predecessor at the apex of athletics, Lamine Diack. In January 2022, the late-Diack’s son Papa joined us on Capital Sports to explain how Lord Coe was not unaware of corruption in athletics, had been an active participant in corruption, and was willing to sell out others while staying ‘clean’. This while using the Diacks to get him elected to the top job. So now, we finally get to what Seb’s latest scandal involves, and you will be unsurprised to learn that it is his favorite whipping boy – Russia. Still no for Russia When Russia was outed as having a major doping problem and banned from international athletics in November 2015, Coe was just over three months into his newly minted role of International Association of Athletics Federations and was fully aware of doping within the sport. “There is no way, none, zero, not a chance, that Coe was oblivious to Russian doping, or doping from Brits, Irish, or anyone. He came through a doping system, raced with fellow dopers, and then he turns on the Russians. Give me a break,” a top-level British coach told me when producing a documentary for Capital Sports in 2016. At that time, it was baffling that Russia alone would be made an example of, while nothing was done within the sport to stop the scourge of doping. Read more Russian athletes are paying the price for dirty politics – again Russia needed a kicking and