Sebastian Coe has insisted he did not discuss allegations of corruption at the IAAF with the former 10,000m world record holder Dave Bedford before he was sent an email detailing how money was extorted from the Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova.
What Coe knew about the worst scandal in athletics history – and when – has been one of the enduring issues of his presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations, with the BBC programme Panorama accusing him of misleading parliament on Thursday night and the Daily Mail suggesting his job was hanging by a thread yesterday after Bedford revealed that they had talked before he sent Coe an email.
There seemed little sign that was true in Vienna, despite a barrage of questions from the British press pack. Coe’s denial could not have been more emphatic when he was asked whether he and Bedford had discussed the Shobukhova case or the web of corruption involving the former IAAF marketing executive Papa Massata Diack. “No, there was absolutely no detailed conversation,” Coe said. “At the time we were all operating on the basis that there were allegations about doping. Whether it was Russian race walkers in Saransk or individual competitors. And there is a very clear exchange of emails that were forwarded, and an email back to me from ethics commission head Michael Beloff saying: ‘Thank you very much.’”
Coe insisted again that he never opened the attachment in an email sent to him by Bedford – because he asked his PA, who deals with all his emails, to pass it on to Beloff instead. “I don’t claim this to be a badge of honour but anybody who really knows me will know that I don’t have a computer, I don’t open emails, my office deals with those and deals with them promptly,” he said.
Coe also pointed out that he was the person who set up the IAAF’s ethics committee which ended up banning for life a number of senior officials, including Papa Massata Diack, Valentin Balakhnichev, the ex-IAAF treasurer and president of the All-Russian Athletics Federation, and Alexei Melnikov, the former Russian endurance head coach, for life.
“I actually take some pride that when I rejoined the IAAF in any practical way back in 2013 I drove through the Ethics Board,” Coe said. “The discussion we are having here is in large part because it was created to accept and act upon that kind of information.
“I did not go out of my way and sit there in detail, going through every allegation and rumour I was given, because how would I possibly be able to act on that unilaterally? That had to be done through a proper organisation. You guys operate in sport. We live in a swirling world of rumours.”
Coe was also grilled over text messages from his campaign team to Papa Massata Diack, who is now on the run from Interpol, before he was elected in August last year. Again he denied any wrongdoing. “I’m sorry but lots of people give advice, lots of people want to be probably on the winning side, and that advice comes in at all times and in all directions,” he said. “Some of it is accepted and some of it is gently and kindly thanked for – and that is it in its entirety.”
