Hard race for Coe to finish

It is stating the blindingly obvious to say that Sebastian Coe, the former Olympic gold medallist, is in a very different race against the clock in his job as president of track and field’s world body, the IAAF.

The finishing line that the British peer for life, more correctly titled Baron Coe of Ranmore, has doubtless set himself is the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.

Since ascending to the hot seat which he took over from the now discredited Lamine Diack of Senegal in November 2014, Coe has done the honourable thing and stood up to the machine-gun fire aimed at the sport, bedevilled by the allegations of corruption and doping.

Wada, the international watchdog on doping, in a report last November said it had found “systemic failures” in the IAAF had prevented an “effective” antidoping programme and concluded that Russia should be banned from competing in international competitions because of a cover-up of positive doping results in at least six athletes during 2011.

The IAAF moved quickly, confirming a suspension after a council meeting in Monaco and said the Russian federation had not requested a hearing, but was offered a route back to the Rio Games, giving the new Russian federation a list of criteria.

As you would imagine, Coe took the side of the athletes as the acrimony rained down, saying “that the whole system has failed the athletes, not just in Russia, but around the world”.

But then Diack was arrested in France last November on allegations of corruption and money laundering and the embattled Coe sank deeper into the quicksand.

The cloud hanging over athletics darkened last month when adidas, the IAAF’s biggest sponsor, backed out of a deal four years early, a body blow that will cost the ruling body something in the region of $33 million – a move described by iconic sprinter Michael Johnson as more serious than that faced by Fifa.

This was rapidly followed by the cancellation of Nestle’s $1 million-a-year sponsorship of worldwide youth athletics.

Bewildered and on the verge of going broke, athletics is currently handicapped on all fronts.

And although Coe knows were the finishing line is, he surely can’t see it clearly right now.