Coe re-elected for final term as World Athletics President

Sebastian Coe was re-elected as World Athletics President for a third and final term yesterday.

Britain’s double Olympic 1500 metres gold med­allist, first elected in 2015, stood unopposed at the World Athletics Congress.

The 66-year-old polled 192 of the 195 votes with three abstaining – 98.5 per cent – in a vote held two days before the start of the World Athletics Championships in the Hungarian capital.

Coe thanked delegates for re-electing him.

The election was overseen by World Athletics’ senior vice-presi­dent, Sergey Bubka, Ukraine’s 1988 Olympic pole vault gold medallist and six-time world champion, who Coe had beaten when first elected to head the International Federa­tion at Beijing in 2015.

Coe’s first two terms in office since succeeding the now disgraced Lamine Diack saw him having to clear up the corruption left by his predecessor and tackling the sport’s drug problem by setting up the Athletics Integrity Unit, which has become a blueprint for other organisations.

Russia has been a dominant issue for Coe having banned them shortly after his election follow­ing evidence of state-sponsored doping.

They were only readmitted to World Athletics earlier this year, but remain out in the cold follow­

 ing Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022 of Ukraine, which Coe has condemned more vocally than any other International Federation.

Coe acknowledged that most of his first two terms had been taken up fire-fighting rather being able to concentrate on making athletics a better product.

Coe, however, may not complete this final term as there is growing support for him to stand to replace Thomas Bach as International Olympic Committee President when his term ends in 2025.

If Coe should succeed, then he will step down from World Athletics.

He still has to officially con­firm that he will stand.-insidethe­games

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