After losing IOC election, how about Seb Coe for chair of football regulator?
It was, with hindsight, not a “keep Seb Coe out” but a “get Kirsty Coventry in” campaign that determined the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidential election outcome.
I was as guilty as most British observers in believing that Seb Coe would take it to the wire. Unconscious bias and all that.
In the event, eight votes and a distant third place ranks just above the Football Association’s humiliation in mustering only two votes to host the 2018 Fifa World Cup and, most years, the UK’s scores at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Coe was a board member of the FA bid that attracted such derisory support back in 2010. The subsequent inquests had many missteps to pick over – not least the gift of handbags to voters which was whipped into a storm by one indignant recipient. England a two-faced, holier-than-though nation?
Away from the specifics, there was much breast-beating speculation as to whether there was something about the Brits that engendered deep-seated resistance when it came to bid processes in sport. A hangover of Empire or reaction to the presumption that comes with our “universal” language? There was a sense the world was against us. Nonsense, obviously.
It was – and still is – an irony that Coe led Britain’s victory in securing the hosting of London 2012. But that success back in 2005 soon became cited as the exception that proved a rule.
UK Sport, its resources boosted by government on the back of the Olympic bid, has invested consistently in an “international influence” programme ever since. Its aim is to improve the chances of Brits securing high sporting office, and of Britain hosting major events. The conundrum of global attitudes towards the UK and its sporting leaders is much debated.
Coe’s IOC campaign will have received UK Sport backing. His surprising (to British eyes) share of the vote will doubtless prompt renewed introspection within the agency about nationality. Those handling the inquest at UKS will do well to resist the temptation to view the IOC result as either a reaction to Coe’s Britishness or evidence of a well-orchestrated plot to block him.
If anyone should be bitter at outgoing president Thomas Bach’s ill-concealed favouring of victor Kirsty Coventry over the past few months, it is runner-up Juan Antonio Samaranch who mustered 28 votes to Coventry’s 49.
Like the Zimbabwean swimmer-turned-sports minister, Samaranch has done his time at the IOC. He’s been a member since 2001, whereas Coe has been in the gang for just four years. Still only 41 years old, Coventry has already served since 2013.
Those on the ground report that Coe’s team thought their man had 26 votes in the bag on the eve of the election. Rival camps had him at 20. Them’s the breaks.
Outsiders may criticise the IOC with apparent good cause – I do – but it is easy to understand why those inside the club believe it well placed to ride out the obvious challenges ahead of it. Change, given that mindset, will be organic and incremental.
Four years inside the tent is no time at all for an organisation that has had just nine presidents in 130 years. Not when there are no overt crises – or at least no issues that the leadership would admit to being worthy of that label.
Coe’s nationality was less important, then, than his clubbability, or lack thereof in IOC circles. There are, of course, Brits in sport quietly pleased with his defeat last week. Such is the territory for any politician, sporting or otherwise. He did not get where he is today… etc.
UK Sport’s analysis will doubtless conclude that, for the very highest offices, the race is very much an ultra-marathon not a middle-distance dust-up.
“The result is a demonstration of good governance,” Thomas Bach said. Added IOC member Dick Pound: “[It] makes the Vatican conclave look like it’s open house.” Pound is described by the IOC itself as “likely the most influential member who never succeeded to the presidency.”
One week on, I reckon Coe taking time out to appear at the unveiling of Manchester United’s new stadium plans a mere 10 days before the IOC election should have told us that, deep down, he was resigned to losing out.
Had there been any votes that could have been swung with an extra day of canvassing, surely Jim Ratcliffe would have given him a pass to skip the trip.
Coe’s chairing of the stadium taskforce might give us a clue as to his future, Chelsea FC fan or not. With just two years left at the helm of World Athletics, his other roles such as this take on greater significance.
These include a seat on the board of the new National Lottery operator as its senior independent director. A reactivation of his relationship with Nike, on ice while at World Athletics, is surely on the cards. The LA 28 Olympics organisers may well sign him up as an ambassador too.
Interviewed about the planned replacement of Old Trafford, Coe cited the project’s cross-party political support. Although a Conservative peer, he has long been able to skate across the political spectrum in the interests of sport.
If he has had his fill of international governance, perhaps the chair of the Independent Football Regulator might be passed under Coe’s nose. He’s no more conflicted within football than other names recently cited as having made the government’s short list.
The history of such processes shows that they are often halted and restarted so that a favoured candidate can be shooed in.
Would Coe be acceptable to the majority of football fans as chair of the IFR? Of course not, but you can be sure that absolutely no-one would be. It’s whether he would be acceptable to No10 that matters.
And there’s probably only one person’s vote needed to bag that post – definitely doable, even if that single voter is a Gooner.
Art for art’s sake
I was introduced to the concept of art anxiety by a friend last week. Not the well-recognised anxiety of artists struggling either to complete their work or to accept its validity. Nor the anxiety of those overwhelmed by artistic beauty (Stendhal syndrome).
Instead, the anxiety engendered by lists of films to watch, TV series to binge, art to see, music to hear, that grow longer and longer in the notes on your phone, accompanied by the realisation that life is too short to experience all the art you feel you should.
“I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence… Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty… I had palpitations of the heart… Life was drained from me… I walked with the fear of falling.”
Stendahl, 1817
There is a read across to sport, although given its vagaries there are some events that are on my list but may never happen, let alone with me there as witness. In particular, a first ever cup triumph for my favourite team (frankly, any cup will do given my shrinking football-watching life expectancy).
The diversity of art far outstrips that of sport. It’s relatively easy to get a taste of each of the latter’s formats. I’ve only a few left to tick (of those that appeal to me). But sporting geniuses are a different matter. The likes of Bolt, Gascoigne, Williams, Ballesteros, Mauger and Stokes stand tall in my memory.
Every year and every season throw up new talents that can only truly be appreciated in the flesh. So many shining stars, so little time. I can feel the palpitations again…
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com