Internet Desk: International Athletics Federation (IAAF) President Sebastian Coe feels the sport will rise from the unprecedented Russian doping crisis to be among the world’s top-four alongside football, tennis and formula one in the next three years.
Coe, a double Olympic gold-medallist, said he is hopeful that the 15-point reforms agenda, which was accented to by the IAAF Special Congress this month, will help athletics get back the trust of clean athletes and the public after the doping scandal.
“The need to reform was much more on the basis of what the modern sport (athletics) required for the vision I have set. The vision is within the next three-four years, our sport should be the among the top four sports, not the top four Olympics sports,” Coe, who took charge as IAAF chief in August last year, told the media from London in a telephonic interview.
“As you know our challenge will be with football, tennis, formula one, that is the true competition, and our competition is not with swimming and gymnastics,” he said.
Asked to review the past athletics season, Coe admitted that the Russian doping crisis which led to their track and field athletes being barred from competing in the Rio Olympics was the “underlying challenge of the year.”
“It has been a tough year and also an important year for our sport. Obviously the highlights are the successful showing by athletes in Rio Olympics where athletics re-asserted as the number one Olympic sport. We had four world championships which were of extraordinarily high standard,” said the 60-year-old Coe, who won a gold medal in 1500m in both 1980 and 1984 Olympics.
“But that does not mask us from the underlying challenge of the year, away from the competitive arena, which will need a long time to build the trust (of clean athletes and public) and that process has started with the reforms we got accented by the Special Congress,” he said.
A radical governance structure reforms package was passed by the IAAF in a Special Congress in Monaco this month, with 182 member federations voting for it out of 197 present.
The 15-point reforms package includes placing more governance power in the hands of the IAAF Executive Board, limiting the number of terms of office for President to three of four years each.
But Coe, who also served as the head of 2012 London Olympics Organising Committee, said there was no reduction in the powers enjoyed by the president even though there would be more checks and balances.
“It’s not diminishing of power of president. It’s just re-balancing. The problem was too much power was given to too few people without enough checks and balances. It’s not really the president has less powers, it’s that there are checks and balances to make sure the president for the very first time alongside the Chief Executive and General Secretary has a proper role and properly quantified set of responsibilities.
But the member federations and ultimately the congress will be able to judge us,” he explained.
Explaining the rationale behind the sweeping reforms, he said, “The issue we have to deal with is very clear to me.
First of all, the constitution was outdated and not relevant enough for the circumstances the modern sport has to deal with. Secondly and pre-eminently, our governance structure was not strong enough.”
Asked if he was disappointed at not getting Jamaica, an athletics power, on board, Coe, said, “I can’t answer that question. Frankly, you should ask those questions to the associations of these countries. I am very pleased that 95 per cent of the federations supported the reforms including India.
I am very grateful for the great support of Adille Sumariwalla.