AS AN athlete, Sebastian Coe always paid attention to detail. It was an attitude drummed into him by his driven, obsessive coach-cum-father, Peter, and it helped him to something no other athlete has achieved before or since: two successive 1,500 metres Olympic gold medals.
He is taking the same determined and disciplined approach to his role as the leader of the bid to bring the Olympic Games to London in 2012. It is a long way off, but decision time is nearing and if a week is a long time in politics, this week is a long and important one in the politics of world sport.
It is the week when the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation team comes to cast its eye over the city challenging Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow to host the greatest sporting event on earth. From its arrival today to its departure at the weekend, Lord Coe’s every waking moment will be taken up with ensuring that the seven voting members and nine-strong support team are treated well and, above all, that they get a sense both of Britain’s passion for sport and also of the detailed work being done to deliver in reality a Games that exists largely on paper at present.
He has left nothing to chance. He has subjected himself and his team to a full “dress rehearsal”, conducted in the same Canary Wharf hotel where today Nawal El Moutawakel, the IOC team leader, and her colleagues will be putting Coe and co through their paces. Coe assembled a team of real experts in all aspects of the Games, including several involved in winning the bid for Sydney in 2000, to grill them on every detail of the enormous bid plan. They even rehearsed the procedures for greeting people off planes and getting them out through the airport as quickly as possible.
El Moutawakel is no stranger to Coe. They won gold within four days of each other in Los Angeles in 1984, the Moroccan in the 400 metres hurdles. And therein lies one of the strong points of the London bid, one which in our often cynical media can be overlooked, namely that Coe is something of a legend in world athletics.
I sometimes think that his association with politics in his brief tenure as an MP and then as William Hague’s chief of staff somewhat diminished him in the eyes of the British public. Overseas, however, there is a greater acceptance of a proper link between sport and politics.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former IOC President, in part rose to that position by spending four years as Spain’s Ambassador to Russia from 1976 to 1980, using those years to build the base he needed in world sport to get the top job. In so far as Olympic people are aware of Coe’s parliamentary and political career, it is probably viewed as an asset. But it is as an athlete that he is known and respected.
When Coe attended the World Skiing Championships in Italy a few days ago, he was attracting almost as much attention from Italian television as the women skiers they were meant to be covering. When the Olympic movement and the various bid teams gathered recently in Croatia, the headline in the main paper said: “Rogge, Samaranch and Coe in Dubrovnik”. It may not have pleased the other bid leaders, but it underlined his unique status. Jean-Claude Killy, the French skier, is the only top-flight sportsman to have led a bid before, for Albertville for the Winter Olympics of 1992. It is a happy precedent, for Killy’s team won.
I saw some of this Coe phenomenon at work at the Games in Athens. Because I know him mainly from the days when he and I were on opposite sides of the Blair-Hague battle lines, I too had forgotten just how powerful the Coe sporting brand is. At the time, you may recall, I was still hunting for the greatest sportsmen and women of all time. In interviews with athletes, his name came up again and again.
Hicham El Guerrouj, the Moroccan middle-distance runner and probably the athletes’ favourite athlete, named Coe unhesitatingly as the best sportsman of all time, bar none. Similarly, on winning the first of her two medals, Kelly Holmes seemed almost as pleased to be receiving it from Coe as to be receiving it at all. He has a quality that other athletes really respect and admire.
I ALSO saw Coe operating in the very complicated political circles that make up the Olympic movement, where you have to know who is who and how to treat them. He had to charm presidents and prime ministers and was easily up to the task. He has served on a stack of domestic and international sporting bodies and has that vital political skill of being able to remember a face and a name from some tedious committee meeting way back when.
We came back from Athens on the same flight and chatted for much of the journey by the toilet at the back of the plane. A succession of sports administrators from various parts of the world came by. He seemed to know them all and know something about them and sport in their country. I was impressed.
I’ve met him fairly regularly in recent months, most recently last week, and during that time have also noticed the cut of his suits becoming just that little bit more expensive and made to measure, the shine on his shoes that little bit shinier. Looking the part, as well as sounding the part, matters in the world in which he now operates.
It is all part of the attention to detail. When he takes the IOC team to Buckingham Palace for dinner with the Queen, or to Downing Street to meet the country’s political leadership, the IOC evaluators will be looking not just for the extent of royal and political support for the bid, which is considerable. They will also be looking at how Coe and his people mix in those circles. They will be working out whether they fancy spending several years working in close proximity to him and his team.
So there is a lot riding on this week. The IOC has its systems for evaluation, its experts on security, transport, ticketing or environmental impact, but in the end a lot of the judgments will be subjective and personal as well as political and Coe knows he will need his wits about him. He also knows that it will be making a judgment about the extent of London’s desire to land the Games.
There is no doubt that Coe has made a big difference for the better since he replaced Barbara Cassani. He works phenomenally hard. He is good at getting different people involved in different ways. Even the notoriously difficult UK media are well on board. Crucially, the technical bid is strong and there is a sense that Paris, though still clear favourite, has rather been taking the whole thing for granted.
So the bid is there for the winning. It will not be easy. But if this week goes well, the chances rise even more.
A lot of that is down to Coe. I don’t take easily to being nice about Conservatives and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the team that ensured he was not a happy man after the last election. But then he was in the back room. Now, he is out front and up front, leading the team and looking like he used to look on the track — a winner.
