IOC Presidency: World Athletics boss Seb Coe playing cards close to chest

World Athletics President Seb Coe says he is waiting for the heavy clouds to clear before he can make his final approach towards the runway to the International Olympic Committee Presidency.

With incumbent Thomas Bach’s term running out in 2025 after next year’s Paris Olympics, Coe, an Olympic legend, is among individuals said to be at the forefront of the succession battle.

According to the Olympic Charter, an IOC President is elected for an initial eight-year term and is eligible for a second, four-year term.

Bach was elected in 2013, has served his initial eight-year term and his second, four-year term expires in 2025, although some IOC members have been pushing for an amendment of the Olympic Charter to allow him an extra term.

At the IOC’s annual meeting in Mumbai last October, some IOC members, primarily from Africa and Latin America, urged Bach to change the rulebook “to continue with the good work he has done.”

But Bach is on record as maintaining the importance of the term limit.

"I have also yesterday made it clear how loyal I am to the Olympic Charter, and having been a co-author of the Olympic Charter, also speak for the fact that I'm thinking term limits are making a lot of sense and are necessary,” Bach, 69, a German Olympic gold medallist in fencing, told the congress in Mumbai.

In a conference call with African journalists on Monday, Coe, a back-to-back Olympic 1,500 metres champion, underscored his long-standing relationship with the Olympic Movement and said he was waiting for clarity from the IOC headquarters in Lausanne before he could make his final descent targeting the Olympic headquarters.

“I don’t think it’s a huge secret that I’ve spent a larger part of my life serving in the Olympic Movement, either as a competitor, a Bid President and then an Organising Committee President of a pretty decent Olympic Games (London 2012) and also President of World Athletics, and I’ve written and broadcasted about the Games… I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise when I tell you that the Olympic Movement is an important element of my life,” said the 67-year-old Coe, also a former British Conservative Party Member of Parliament.

“But until there is some clarity at the IOC about what the future looks like, then I’d like to continue what I’m doing and, I’d like to think, reasonably well, which is navigating a world class team here in Monaco at the World Athletics headquarters.”

Coe noted that his organisation had a brilliant season in 2023, adding that the future looks bright for athletics.

“We left last season stronger than we’ve ever left, and we will leave the Paris (Olympics) next July as, by a distance, the strongest Olympic sport and we will go on building, and that is my focus.”

Prodded further on his possible candidature, the World Athletics President noted: “I haven’t ruled it in and I haven’t ruled it out… I don’t think there’s much clarity on that (presidential election rules)… I don’t know if Charters are being re-written… nobody seems to know.

“I don’t know how to respond to the question because I don’t think the question is for me. The question is for the International Olympic Committee.”

Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior - whose father served as the seventh IOC President from 1980 stepping down in 2001 before his death at the age of 90 nine years later in 2010 – is among other individuals said to be gunning for the IOC Presidency.

Others are Japan's Morinari Watanabe, the President of the International Gymnastics Federation, and French politician David Lappartient, President of the International Cycling Union.