Coe was far more politically engaged than most athletes at the time and so he was a natural choice to speak on behalf of them in Baden-Baden, Germany. That was the first time the IOC, historically the old boys’ club of old boys’ clubs, allowed the athletes' voice to be heard at its decision-making table. The first issue Coe addressed? Doping. “We athletes sincerely hope that you leave this hall fully aware of our feelings,” he said. “On doping, we consider this to be the most shameful abuse of the Olympic idea. We call for the life ban of offending athletes. We call for the life ban of coaches and the so-called doctors who administer this evil.” Coe then called the IOC out on gender inequality. “It is considered that this institution is out of step with modern thinking in its support and inclusion of women,” he said. “We simply call for female equality of opportunity.” Drug use was rampant at the time, with state-sponsored doping in East Germany and the Soviet Union and steroids in widespread use in the US, and drug testing virtually non-existent. As for women’s role in the Olympic movement? They had precious few positions of power and the Olympic programme was hugely slanted towards men, with almost four times as many male Olympians at the 1980 Games as female. It took over four decades, until Paris last year, for that to equalise. A year before Coe spoke to the IOC Congress, UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher had tried to get British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Coe and his family came under huge pressure from Thatcher’s government with a junior foreign office minister meeting Coe’s father and coach, Peter, to try to sway his son to boycott, which Coe refused to do. “My gut instinct was that there was an intellectual dishonesty about what we were trying to achieve,” said Coe. “History proved us right of course, because four years later when we went to LA for the 1984 Olympics the Russians were still in Afghanistan, and the boycott had no impact." Much has changed since 1981. Another of the athlete representatives in the room that day? A German fencer: Thomas Bach. Coe and Bach were largely on the same page back then, but that changed when they moved into sports politics. Bach worked in sports administration in Germany for many years before making a successful run for IOC presidency in 2013, a position he held since. Coe, meanwhile, became a member of parliament with the Conservative Party before going into sports governance, chairing the bid for London to host the 2012 Olympics and then heading up the Games’ Organising Committee. He proved a massive success in both roles. In 2015, he was elected president of the IAAF (now World Athletics) and inherited a dumpster fire of a sport from Lamine Diack, the former president and IOC member who was given a two-year prison sentence in 2020 for corruption: having taken bribes to cover up Russian doping. Coe had been vice president under Diack but said he wasn’t aware of his criminal activities, and while many viewed that with scepticism, no evidence was found in the police investigation to suggest he was. For the last 10 years, Coe has had the top job in athletics and the vast majority deem his tenure a huge success. He has advocated for gender equality, World Athletics being one of very few global governing bodies with a 50-50 gender split on its council. One of Coe’s greatest feats was clamping down on doping, which he did by recruiting David Howman to head up the Athletics Integrity Unit, the gold-standard of anti-doping which operates independently to the governing body, ensuring situations like Diack’s cover-ups could not occur again. Now no name is too big to fall. No one would claim athletics is magically clean as a result, but it’s a lot cleaner than 2015. Coe also took a strong stance against Russia, both on its state-sponsored doping system and the invasion of Ukraine, whereas Bach was always much more lenient, much more forgiving, much cosier with Vladimir Putin. The two also took vastly differing paths when it came to protecting the female category, the IOC refusing to implement any stringent limits which led to the farcical situation in Paris last year as two boxers who reportedly had male chromosomes stepped into a ring with biological females, both coasting to gold medals. Another issue where Bach and Coe diverged? Rewarding athletes. The IOC has long stuck to its amateur ideals, refusing to share a piece of its whopping broadcast pie with athletes by handing out prize money. It has long reminded us that it distributes 90% of its revenue to “support athletes and organisations” across the world, but when it announced a whopping $3 billion broadcast deal with NBC Universal this week for a sole Olympic cycle, that seems awfully stingy, especially when 16 of its managers earn over $500,000 annually. Nice work if you can get it. Last year, Coe broke the mould by announcing that World Athletics would become the first sport to pay prize money at the Games, with each champion in Paris receiving $50,000. “Athletes are, in essence, the bearers of the revenues that we get,” he said. “They are largely responsible for the sums, the revenue streams, the sponsorship that comes into the sport. I’ve always felt that it was really important to recognise that.” Seems only right, you might think. But that move royally pissed off the IOC top brass and on Thursday afternoon, Coe felt the full strength of their riposte. He had gone all out in his bid for IOC Presidency and, to most looking in from outside, he seemed like the best person for the job out of the seven candidates, given what he’d done with World Athletics and at the London Olympics before that. But try telling that to the 97 voting IOC members – a curious mix of royalty, billionaires, business leaders and sports chiefs. Coe received only eight votes, with Kirsty Coventry, a 41-year-old former swimmer, coasting to victory in the first round of voting with 49. Coventry had faced plenty of controversies during her time in politics in her native Zimbabwe, but she was Bach’s preferred candidate, and the German got what he wanted as he prepares to exit stage left: someone who will likely preserve the status quo and not rattle too many cages. Coe, meanwhile, walked away more aware than ever of something that’s long been true of the IOC: if change is to happen, it will occur at a glacial rate – and only on their terms.