Seb Coe lauds Ruto anti-doping pledge, reflects on rich 2023

From February’s World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia, to an exciting 19th World Athletics Championships at a brand-new National Stadium in Budapest, Hungary, and the inaugural World Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia, the year 2023 has been eventful indeed.

Add the one-day meetings and re-engineered end-of-year World Athletics Gala in Monaco, talking points have equally been endless.

World Athletics President Seb Coe, an Olympic legend and former middle-distance world record holder, was very much in the thick of the back-end action, satisfied with yet another successful athletics year.

“We had an outstanding World Championships and the Diamond League was off the graph good with seven world records, two of them literally in the last hour and half of the competition in Eugene,” Coe, also an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Member reminisced in his conference call with African athletics journalists.

“Your own athletes in Africa held centre stage in so many different disciplines, our one-day circuit is growing, the Continental Tour is growing and we had an outstanding meeting in Botswana with a very big crowd…” he added in his virtual conference from his office-with-a-view overlooking the million-dollar-yacht Monaco harbour.

Read: Seb Coe: World Athletics to review controversial new athlete awards format

The 67-year-old winner of four Olympic medals and holder of eight outdoor and three indoor world records is happy that World Athletics has successfully focused on growing the sports in new markets and spreading the appeal of disciplines such as mountain and trail running and the ultra-marathon.

“I look forward to 2024, and, obviously, the Olympic Games sits (at the top), but it’s also worth remembering that World Athletics has five world championships in the next year – track (Glasgow, Scotland, March 1-3), cross country (Belgrade, Serbia, March 30), relays (Nassau, Bahamas, May 4-5), race walk (Antalya, Turkey, April 21) and under-20s (Lima, Peru, August 27-31). All these are important platforms for our sport.

“The Olympics is a big platform and another big opportunity to attract more people into our sport, and maybe more people that tune into the Olympic Games that are not necessarily track and field fans, and that’s going to be important.”

Coe, who launched his stellar athletics career at the age of 12 at Sheffield's Hallamshire Harriers in the North of England, has been big on innovation at the helm of World Athletics, and is cognizant of the increasing demands of sponsors, broadcasters, athletes and the athletics audience.

“You have heard me talk about the need to innovate and the need to change and to really understand what our fans are expecting from us, what our broadcasters want, what our sponsors want and to create a programme of innovation that future proofs the sport and encourages young people to want to choose athletics in all its guises – whether as competitors or participants at a lower level or even administrators, technical officials – to be involved,” he stressed.

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

As part of his flagship innovation projects, Coe announced that in 2026, World Athletics will launch a “Best of the Best” event whose details remain closely guarded “until the first quarter of next year.”

“Netflix will unveil its documentary series in the first half of next year and, as you will remember, they were following our 100-metre runners through to Budapest and those programmes will be aired in the lead-up to the Paris Games. So, there’s lots to look forward to – a big year and a big four years ahead of us!” he offered.

After successfully hosting four editions of the second-tier Continental Tour Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi, Athletics Kenya has already expressed its desire to be handed a leg of the top-tier Diamond League series, something Coe is very much alive to and supports.

“Kenya has declared an interest in staging a Diamond League event and I know the Diamond League Board and General Assembly are very keen to extend the global reach of the event and, obviously, given the quality of the Continental Tour event that’s being staged in Nairobi, I’m really pleased that dialogue is taking place now,” he said, noting that plans for a new stadium in Nairobi to add on to the city’s successful hosting of previous global events will hold the Kenyan bid in good stead.

“You have hosted under-20 and under-18 (world) championships which were hugely successful with good crowds so I can understand the ambition and the keenness to host our events and I’m very grateful for that.”

In 1979, inside 41 days, Coe broke three world records in the 800 metres, the mile and 1,500 metres after training hard, and it’s understandable when he speaks passionately against violation of anti-doping rules and the need to train hard, compete and win clean.

Coe, also a former Conservative Member of the British Parliament for Falmouth and Camborne (1992-1997), stresses that it must be all hands on deck to succeed in the war against doping.

“The only way we are going to beat this scourge is not because World Athletics or the Athletics Integrity Unit or government or national anti-doping agency or member federation or newspaper is focusing on it – we need everyone on board.”

He recalled his first foreign trip this year being to Kenya and expressed his gratitude to President William Ruto for committing resources to Kenya’s anti-doping efforts.

“I sat down with the political leadership of Kenya, including your President, and the extra money was committed to the anti-doping programmes – and it’s a significant sum of money – $25 million (Sh3.8 billion) over five years, $5 million (Sh775 million) every year.

“I think countries and federations must take this seriously. Of all the sports that’s really taking this seriously, I think athletics is front and centre stage and the Athletics Integrity Unit is gold standard in any sport.

“Will we ever get to a stage where we will have an entirely drug-free sport? I really want to think so. But reality tells me that’s not really gonna happen.

“But can we make it harder for the cheats and easier for those who choose to compete with integrity? Then, yes, we have in large part achieved that, but there’s a lot of work to do.

“When government, agencies and the sporting families come together, as they have in Kenya, then you see some outstanding results.

“Am I surprised that numbers are rising? Not really. I’d be surprised if they weren’t, given the extra resource and extra testing that’s taking place – but I think that’s a necessary path along the journey to a better position.

“I was impressed by your President (William Ruto) who made it a matter of national strategy and priority to resolve this set of circumstances,” Coe underscored, noting that Kenya should not feel victimized by the increased sanctions against the country’s elite athletes.

“Our categorization is based on risk. If you have a lot of international level competitors, you have a higher risk profile inevitably than countries that don’t send athletes to World Championships.”

With speculation rife that the Briton could be seeking to take over from Germany's former Olympic fencing champion Thomas Bach at the IOC elections in 2025, Coe maintained that he is waiting for clarity at the IOC’s headquarters on the way forward first before he could throw his hat into the ring.

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 and extra term.

“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…” Coe said.

“I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise, therefore, when I tell you that the Olympic Movement is an important element of my life.

“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.

“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.

“I haven’t ruled it in, and I haven’t ruled it out… I don’t think there’s a great deal of clarity on that (presidential election rules)… I don’t know if Charters are being re-written… nobody seems to really know.

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.

Meanwhile, on the road, the multiple world record holder in the middle distance believes a sub two-hour marathon is possible “sooner rather than later.”

Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum dared to dream when he lowered the world marathon record to two hours and 35 seconds at the Chicago Marathon last October, surpassing Eliud Kipchoge’s previous mark of 2:01:09 clocked in Berlin last year.

Kiptum has since declared that he will aim for a sub two-hour run at the April 14 Rotterdam Marathon next year.

“Rotterdam is a very fast course and a lot of athletes have broken records there…” Coe reflects.

“Eliud (Kipchoge) showed that it’s possible, under choreographed circumstances, to run under two hours (at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge in Vienna on October 12, 2019), and we got preciously close to it under competitive circumstances – I do think that will get broken and sooner rather than later.

“It’s unlikely to be in a championship event… It’s more likely to be in one of the Majors or big city marathons, and I’m sure the athletes will be picking courses that are fast and Rotterdam is certainly fast.”

On the matter of the controversial World Athlete of the Year award that this year saw six athletes rewarded instead of the outright men’s and women’s individual winner, as has been the tradition for the last three decades, Coe maintained that the decision was based on advice generated from athletes themselves.

But he hastened to add that his organisation will take cognizance of the feedback and review the awards format.

The six athletes named World Athletes of the Year for 2023 were Ethiopian marathoner Tigist Assefa (women’s out of stadia), Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis (men’s field), Kenyan marathoner Kelvin Kiptum (men’s out of stadia), Kenya’s track star Faith Kipyegon (women’s track), US sprinter Noah Lyles (men’s track) and Venezuelan triple jumper Yulimar Rojas (women’s field).

The new format was met with criticism from athletics enthusiasts, with some athletes, including USA’s multiple world sprints champion Noah Lyles, also questioning why the change.

“I believe I found the right words for what happened at the AOY awards,” Lyles said on X (formerly Twitter).

“It made me feel that none of our achievements were good enough to be AOY… I’m guessing that was not WA’s goal but that is how it made me feel.”

But Coe said the new format was arrived at in concert with athletes, adding that even Lyles was consulted.

“We tried to reflect what the athletes were saying to us, that they wanted us to understand that we were a sport of many disciplines – we weren’t just track, we weren’t just field – and we needed to pay proper respect to those athletes in those different disciplines.

“Noah (Lyles) himself made a very articulate case on why we should do that.

“We review everything at the end of the season, and will look at that, but I think we will make a judgement that we think reflects what the athletes are saying… but many athletes were clear with me: they wanted something that reflects different disciplines, including road as well and cross country.”

His parting shot? “Merry Christmas to you and your families and see you soon in Glasgow!”

Glasgow will host the first World Athletics Series competition – the World Athletics Indoor Championships – from March 1 to 3 at the Emirates Arena.

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