SEBASTIAN Coe, the World Athletics president, is hopeful that his vision of radical reform can propel him to the top spot in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) when its 109 members vote for a new president in Greece in a few days.

Thomas Bach, who has been at the helm of the organisation for the past 12 years, will hand over the reins in June, with Coe and six other candidates – Prince Feisal Al Hussein, David Lappartient, Johan Eliasch, Juan Antonio Samaranch, Morinari Watanabe, and Kirsty Coventry — due to contest the votes during an IOC session from March 18-21.

The athletics boss has anchored his campaign on the promise of proper welfare support for athletes, greater commercialisation for Olympic sport, sustainability, gender equality, the safeguarding of female sport, and wider accessibility and ‘power’ among stakeholders.

It is a manifesto that has garnered the support of several big names in the sporting world, particularly Jamaica’s Olympic great Usain Bolt — an eight-time gold medal winner at the Games.

Coe, in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Observer, says he feels he is best equipped to deal with the issues affecting the movement given his wide-ranging involvement, not just as the man behind the 2012 Olympic Games in London but as an Olympic champion, a sports marketer, as well as the head of the most popular Olympic sport, track and field.

“I’ve done everything that gives me confidence that I understand not only how an Olympic Games comes together but also about the powerful stakeholders that the movement is made up of,” Coe said.

“I’ve been an athlete, I’ve been the president of an organising committee, I’ve been the president of an international federation, I’ve been the president of a national Olympic committee. I created a sports marketing agency, and I’ve been a government minister. I think that those are the key components of a presidential candidate, and I’m not sure that there’s anyone else that can match those experiences.”

His 43-page manifesto also speaks to the use of artificial intelligence to modernise fan engagement, talent identification, and sport delivery to connect with a younger audience while placing priority on the physical, mental and financial well-being of the athletes.

“Let me say, ‘The overwhelming challenge — and it’s the challenge every sports organisation, every stakeholder in the Olympic family should be focusing on — and that is: How do we maintain the interest and the excitement of young people?’ And the world is complicated, it’s cluttered. There’s misinformation. Plus, young people do everything differently — they consume their interests, they consume information and entertainment in entirely different ways — so focusing on young people and making sure you’ve got the pathways that the Olympic movement can and should be providing as an inspiration for young people, not just to become Olympic champions [is important],” he pointed out.

“The biggest challenge every government has got is about the health and welfare of its population. Sport is the best investment that you will ever make in that space, and it also has very clear and discernible returns,” Coe added. “So, making sure that sport is higher up the government agenda [is key]. I’m speaking to somebody from a country that I know absolutely grasps that concept [as Sports] Minister Olivia Grange, for as long as I have known her, that is something that she wakes up every day trying to engineer.”

Coealso believes AI technology should be more widely utilised to close the gap in talent identification and development among smaller territories, and is convinced that the IOC has a greater role to play in this initiative.

“Under normal circumstances talent identification, particularly in smaller countries, is a real challenge. You have extraordinary talent in many of your surrounding countries and territories, and maybe not the economic wealth, the economic ability to actually unlock that — and AI can do that. And so, really, we should be using modern technology to close the gap between the smaller national Olympic committees and the better-heeled and more economically viable national Olympic committees,” Coe shared while using the Caribbean region as a reference, pointing to the need for collaboration at all levels.

“We can learn a lot from the creative partnerships that I’ve witnessed in the Caribbean. You know the Carifta Games, for instance, came out of a political construct. I know that the way that you activate really smartly with many of your local sponsors, I’ve witnessed that on the ground and I think we run the risk of only thinking … that we can only learn from the big member federations. I know that there are lessons to be learned, that the great thing about this election is having spent time — I mean hours at a time — in conversation, one-on-one conversations. I know that there is as much to be learned from the way small national Olympic committees create opportunities for all their stakeholders as there is from the large national Olympic committees that routinely do this well,” Coe shared.

According to Coe, one recurring critical point raised during his discussions is the feeling that major decisions are largely centralised. He says he is committed to transparency within the movement and a more inclusive approach to governance, with members playing a bigger role in the decision-making process.

Coe also pointed to the efforts by World Athletics, under his stewardship, to bring fairness to female sport, and believes crucial intervention is necessary at the Olympic level.

“We saw it as a big enough threat within the sport to do what we’ve done about it. But without getting into the details of what we’ve done, the most important thing here is clarity — clarity of decision-making — and if you don’t have clear policies then the only people that are really suffering in that are the athletes,” reasoned Coe. “For me, the integrity of competition, the protection of the female category, women’s sport, is absolutely sacrosanct.”

Women’s boxing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was at the centre of a major gender dispute, which was later dismissed by Bach as Russian propaganda.

World Athletics has grappled with the issues in recent years with high-profile cases and studies. The organisation is currently engaging in a stakeholder consultation regarding eligibility regulations for the female category, specifically focusing on transgender and difference of sex development (DSD) athletes.

This comes after a ban in 2023 on transgender women, who have experienced male puberty, from competing in women’s events.

Meanwhile Bolt, one of the Olympic Games’ greatest athletes, threw his support behind Coe.

Bolt took to his social media accounts, posting: “Best wishes to @worldathletics President @sebcoeofficial on his quest to become @olympics IOC President next week. Seb’s vision of Sports First, Tomorrow’s Generation, Athletes at the Heart, Growth and Empowerment is what is needed for the future of the Olympic movement.”

Coe himself has also spoken at length about engaging the Olympic alumni to drive home the message and value of the movement.

“They have extraordinary history, and heritage, and willingness to want to support the movement, to make sure that we create lifelong bonds to the Olympic movement so that our Olympians feel that they have a lifelong commitment and bond to developing Olympic values. And many of them will go on to all sorts of areas of expertise and sometimes in leadership roles that we want them to travel with and cherish their memories and their experiences in the Olympic movement, and to use the Olympic movement as a way of creating opportunities in the world that they go on to serve,” Coe told the Observer.

Coe is hopeful that the IOC membership will connect with his vision and believes he is prepared for the role, which he described as a lifelong passion.

“It will be an extraordinary honour to be in a leadership position inside the Olympic movement that I owe so much to. This is something — I probably wouldn’t have recognised it as such when I started out on that journey — but this is something I feel I’ve been in training for my whole life. It’s not a job, it’s a passion!” said Coe.

BOLT…best wishes to @worldathletics President @sebcoeofficial on his quest to become @olympics IOC President next week. Seb’s vision of Sports First, Tomorrow’s Generation, Athletes at the Heart, Growth and Empowerment is what is needed for the future of the Olympic movementFile