Zimpapers Logo

BEIJING. — Sebastian Coe was elected as the new head of international athletics yesterday and promised to stand by his campaign pledge to set up an independent anti-doping body for the embattled sport. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has been battered by allegations over the last three weeks of widespread doping in track and field.

While the 58-year-old Briton said an independent body was the only way to ensure an end to any question about the IAAF’s vigilance, he also said he was inheriting a “very strong sport” from Senegalese Lamine Diack.

Britain’s Coe beat Sergey Bubka in a tight vote to become the new president of world athletics body the IAAF yesterday with a series of doping controversies at the top of his agenda.

Coe won 115 votes to Bubka’s 92, and will take over from Diack, who used his departing speech to take a defiant stab at the sport’s doping detractors, saying they had painted athletics as a “monster”.

Coe likened his victory, at an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) congress in Beijing, to celebrating the birth of his four children.

“For most of us in this room, we would conclude that the birth of our children is a big moment in our lives, probably the biggest,” London-born Coe (58) told the congress.

“But I have to say that being given the opportunity to work with all of you and shape the future of our sport is probably the second biggest and (most) momentous occasion of my life.

“In the best traditions of everything in what we believe in our sport, it was fought according to sound judgement throughout,” he said.— AFP.