PARIS, France (AFP) — Sebastian Coe said on Friday he feels he has a fighting chance of becoming the next leader of the Olympic movement after he and his rivals faced an intense day of presentations.
In an interview at AFP’s headquarters in Paris, the president of World Athletics spoke about trying to convey his vision of the Olympic future in a short speech to his fellow International Olympic Committee (IOC) members in Lausanne 24 hours earlier, with the candidates not allowed to face questions.
“You can’t do a great deal in 15 minutes, once you’ve sort of had a few words of pleasantries and got your other eye on a countdown clock,” Coe said.
“I hope I was able to convey a serious approach to the role, that this isn’t a one-off.”
“You know, the presentation is important, but content is important.”
Coe is not the only one of the seven hopefuls to argue for an IOC in which the members have a greater voice — “I think it’s critical,” he said — but he argues that he has already put his money where his mouth is.
“One of the things that I think I have achieved at World Athletics is I had a very top-down organisation,” the Briton said.
“I’m not remotely comparing what I inherited at World Athletics with the International Olympic Committee, but the general proposition is that my style is very clear.”
“If you’ve got really smart people around you and your ambition as a leader is to have people that are smarter than you around you, then use them. Don’t micromanage.”
Coe undoubtedly ruffled feathers within the Olympic movement by deciding to pay prize money to gold medal winners in athletics, starting at last year’s Paris Olympics.
It was a move that he argues was “aligned to what we felt were the interests of the sport” but which he made without consulting his fellow federations.
One of Coe’s leading rivals for the IOC job, Zimbabwean sports minister Kirsty Coventry, said on Thursday she would prefer to give athletes financial assistance early in their careers.
“I did say to the ASOIF (Association of Summer Olympic International Federations), on reflection, I would have announced it and done it in a different way,” Coe said.