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.
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.
Russia needed a kicking and got one, but that wasn’t enough for Seb. Despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowing individual sporting bodies to decide for themselves on re-admitting Russian and Belarusian teams and athletes to competition, World Athletics stoutly went against it. From March until earlier this month, there were discussions about how to begin the normalization of sports ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, but Seb and co. were an outlier.
“A conditional pathway back into international competition” for Russian and Belarusian athletes was discussed, Coe told the media three weeks ago, but opted against it. This from a man who told AFP in 2025 that allowing Russia back was not something he “could ever really be neutral about.” In other words, he was never going to allow Russia or Belarus back into athletics, because he had chosen a side. Because Seb never forgets.
‘Septic’ Coe
Within the sports community, Coe is widely known as ‘Septic’ and realized this when he tried to take over the IOC last year. The consummate politician and networker, he found doors slammed in his face before the election. Only one round of voting was needed to make history and have Zimbabwe swimming legend Kirsty Coventry become the first woman and African elected to the presidency.
Coe got a pitiful 8 votes to Coventry’s 49 and was sent packing back to his fiefdom in track and field. The Englishman was the bookies’ favorite to become IOC president, but it wasn’t only the Global South that swung the day. Europeans didn’t want him, as most of them went for the son of former IOC boss and General Franco confidante Juan Antonio Samaranch, who got 28 votes and generously called Coventry’s election “something special that shows what the world wants, a fresh start.”
His magnanimity, Spanish media said , was linked to a statement the Zimbabwean made regarding the IOC’s treatment of Russia and Belarus – “If conflicts in Africa don’t trigger sanctions against national teams, then Russia shouldn’t be isolated.”
Seb has not forgiven the IOC and its members for wholeheartedly rejecting him. He probably doesn’t even know why he was rejected. He will blame Russia, or Africans, or Johnny Bloody Foreigner. Because he won’t look in the mirror and realize that a history of cheating and corruption, of double-dealing and double-crossing, of betraying friends, allies, and supporters all in a quest for gold and glory builds a lot of negative karma. From the late 1970s in the Loughborough ‘factory’ to Olympic podiums, from the dank halls of Westminster to the murky heights of sports administration, Seb Coe’s world view has formed very simply. The planet revolves around him and we are lucky to inhabit it. And how to cure him of his Russophobia, as he has been accused of by Russia’s Stanislav Pozdnyakov? Simple, if Papa Diack’s experience is to be believed. A wire transfer and steak dinner.
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