Not a great week to be setting off on the campaign trail with hopes and ideals for the future of any sport. Because if Sebastian Coe is not entirely sure what he’s letting himself in for by going forward as the new leader of world athletics then he’s not the only one.
No such leader can be sure of where their sport is going these days, including those a lot closer to home. With the GAA appearing increasingly willing to share the same bed as rugby there is already some dirty talk about what is really going on between the sheets. And while it’s nice to be asking brilliant Kilkenny hurlers like JJ Delaney why he went rather than why he didn’t, should a current All Star really be finished at just 32?
Over in Monaco, the heavyweights of Olympic sports are trying to figure out where they are going, when less and less cities are making those old lavish bids, for either the summer or winter Games. Why any city without vast reserves of oil money would want to pour millions into the bid process alone does take a little more explaining these days, and it probably doesn’t help when the IOC is still no country for young men.
Why Coe would want to put himself at the coalface of world athletics at age 58, having already seen and done it all, is at least partly understandable. On one level, he said this week, it was one of the easiest decisions of his life: “For as long as I can remember, I have woken up knowing that athletics, in some way, would shape my day. As a young boy, running was the thing I loved beyond anything else, and I have been hugely fortunate that athletics has been at the centre of my life ever since.”
Election manifesto
Before noon on Wednesday, at the British Olympic Association offices on Charlotte Street in London, Coe presented his election manifesto in full: current IAAF president Lamine Diack, the 80 year-old from Senegal, will step down next August, after 16 years in the position he effectively inherited in 1999 after the sudden death of the enormously charismatic Italian Primo Nebiolo. Diack, then vice-president, was later elected into the position, although his term as IAAF president has coincided with athletics falling further and further away from the centre of the global sporting radar, soon earning him a nickname to help reflect that (hint: it rhymes with Lamine Diack).
Coe will face some opposition when the 212 IAAF member states vote in Beijing next August, with Ukraine’s former pole vault world record holder Sergey Bubka also eyeing up the position. Coe already has the squeaky-clean delivery of the London Olympics in his favour, and his election manifesto was cautiously yet deliberately broad, with four priorities: reforming the world athletics calendar; focusing on youth engagement; giving a greater voice for athletes; and increasing resources for anti-doping.
Still, nothing could have prepared Coe for the potentially sudden shift in priorities, later than evening, when the German TV channel Das Erste (effectively their RTÉ One) aired the one-hour documentary entitled Geheimsache Doping: Wie Russland seine Sieger macht - or "Top-secret Doping: How Russia makes its Winners". It contained a series of allegations from Russian athletes and coaches, including discus thrower Evgenia Pecherina, who claimed "99 per cent" of the Russian Olympic team had doped.
Some of the claims were almost laughable if they weren’t so disturbing: like, if nine out of 10 Russian athletes are happy to take drugs, what’s wrong with the other guy?
Bronze medal
But if it reinforced one thing, as far as Irish athletics is concerned, then it’s the need for Rob Heffernan to be awarded the bronze medal from the 50km walk at the London Olympics, where he finished fourth, if indeed Russia’s gold medal winner Sergey Kirdyapkin is among the “99 per cent” – not that Heffernan didn’t suspect that already. Kirdyapkin has never been seen or heard of since.
For Hajo Seppelt, the man behind Geheimsache Doping and whose undercover filming also revealed some disturbing claims about Kenyan distance running, two years ago, the suggestion is doping in Russia extends far beyond athletics, as the documentary also implicated soccer, swimming, cycling and most Winter Olympic sports. Unsurprisingly Russia topped the medal table on home soil in Sochi e this year.
Seppelt is clearly a man who knows what trees are worth barking at, and there can’t be too many leaders of any sport, including rugby, who would feel safe with him nosing around with his recording devices.
But there are still hopes and ideals for the future. Sonia O’Sullivan was in Croke Park on Wednesday talking about attracting more women into sport. Even after admitting, without being bitter, that she’d probably been denied several championship medals by athletes who were doping at the time, she said she would love to think her daughters, Ciara and Sophie, would someday pursue their athletics careers.
“I still think athletics is a fantastic sport, and a great lifestyle, if you can get to a certain level. There will always be highs and lows along the way, but there are so many great opportunities to travel, meet people, and make friends.” Which, whether O’Sullivan meant it that way or not, sounds like a nice campaign slogan for a future leader of world athletics.
