Sebastian Coe was re-elected to a third and final term as President of World Athletics on Thursday.
The Briton, who was elected for the first time in 2015 and a two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500 m, had no opposition.
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The 66-year-old received 192 out of 195 votes with three abstentions – 98.5%. – during the voting, which took place two days before the start of the World Athletics Championships in the Hungarian capital.
Coe thanks the delegates for their re-election.
“We’ve got a lot of unfinished business…let’s take this baby home”; he told them.
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Elections overseen by World Athletics’ Senior Vice President Sergei Bubka, gold medalist in the pole vault at the 1988 Olympics and six-time world champion whom Coe defeated when he was first elected head of the International Federation in Beijing in 2015.
He was the final act of It’s Bubka before stepping down after 22 years on the governing body’s board, Insidethegames reported yesterday after criticizing its ties to Russia.
In his first two terms since taking office from the disgraced Lamine Diack, Coe has had to root out the corruption bequeathed by his predecessor and tackle the drug problem in sport by founding the Athletic Integrity Unit, which has become a model for other organizations.
Russia was Coe’s biggest concern, which banned them shortly after his election due to evidence of state-sponsored doping.
They were only reinstated in World Athletics earlier this year but remain on the sidelines after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which Coe denounced louder than any other international federation. Coe admitted he spent most of his first two terms putting out fires rather than focusing on making athletics a better product.
“The first four years of my tenure were to save the ship from sinking,” he said.
“We were in a really difficult situation.
“The next four years were all about things that sat in the inbox too long.
“The next four years will be focused on the product that will define the future of sport for the next 30 years.”
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.
“I genuinely haven’t ruled it in and I haven’t ruled it out,” he said.
