The steely determination to fight for the sport’s soul...

LORD COE had looked tired in front of the TV lights the night before, his face wearing the furrows of the week’s worries, but yesterday the recently tarnished golden boy of British athletics called his closest advisers to offices in central London to talk through the fight that lies before him and his sport.

The public bit was done for now. He had told the world that athletics’ governing body, of which he is president, the IAAF had indefinitely suspended Russia from international competition and he had slept soundly.

His mood in yesterday’s private discussions, which lasted through the day, was described as one of ‘steely determination’. The agenda was pressing: today a World Cross Country meeting will be staged in Burgos, Spain and the Saitama Marathon will be run in Japan and the first requirement was to ensure that every practical step was taken to make certain no Russian made it on to the start line.

This last week Coe has run the political equivalent of the 800metres he did at the Moscow Olympics. He got hopelessly boxed in, left it too late and finished a few yards short. In 1980, his tactical naivety was castigated in the strongest four-letter terms by his father and coach.

However, after the 800m disaster came redemption in the 1500m. A race when he stuck it up Steve Ovett and the world. It is athletics’ hope that he repeats the trick in a different forum.

Banning Russia was obviously the first important step in the eyes of the world. Less obvious but crucially important was the appointment of Lord Deighton to oversee the IAAF reform programme being carried out by Deloitte.

As Paul Deighton, he was Coe’s right-hand man in organising the London Olympics. He did the details while Coe presented the public face. Deighton was well-suited to the task.

A Cambridge graduate, he prospered at Goldman Sachs — where only the best and the strongest reach the top — becoming a partner and chief operating officer for Europe.

Coe would be the first to admit his debt to Deighton. He was a man who got things done and his seminal role in the success of London 2012 was recognised by his ennoblement and subsequent appointment as Commercial Secretary to the Treasury.

Contrary to popular perception — and yesterday’s long talks — Coe is not chained to his desk all day (he does not send emails but relies on phone, pen and paper). Indeed, one of his great skills is in delegation and picking the right people around him. He is fiercely loyal to them and they are to him.

That has, of course, got him into bother in recent weeks. He was gushing about Lamine Diack, his predecessor as IAAF president who is being investigated for allegedly covering up failed drugs tests and has spoken approvingly of his friend Alberto Salazar, Mo Farah’s under-suspicion coach. Why? It is the same loyalty that caused him to visit Lord Archer in prison. In this case, it has left him hostage to fortune.

What it does not remotely imply is that he was a coconspirator in corruption. Those close to him say they have never seen him more startled than when he learnt of the accusations about Diack. ‘He had no inkling of what was coming,’ I am told. ‘His face fell.’

It was unusually maladroit of Coe to describe some reporting of the Russian drugs scandal as a ‘declaration of war on my sport’. It was not only a tactical mistake, it mischaracterised his that is accepted, how can he countenance accepting money — a six-figure sum — from an organisation that sponsors the athletics’ most high-profile drugs cheat, Justin Gatlin?

Ah, his defenders would say, it is only a British objection. In America, people see Nike as offering Gatlin redemption. It does not wash here.

Coe is also likely to be asked awkward questions by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee on December 2 about his chairmanship of Chime Sport and Entertainment. He took up the job after selling his sports-based Complete Leisure Group to Chime in 2012 for £12million — it was not all cash own long-expressed belief in the freedom of the press.

I can vouch for this. When I was banned from UK Athletics events for writing something that a few pettifogging officials did not like, Coe took up the case with the IAAF and got me back in on the basis that journalists should be free to write things the powers that be do not like.

He has also spoken time and again about the press’s helpful role in ‘punching the tyres’. Well, we are still punching the idea that it is acceptable for him to continue as a Nike ambassador. His opinion is that because he sits out any discussions where there would potentially be a conflict of interest, all is well. But even if up front and has an earn-out element that has some time left to run.

After a costly divorce and with four children at school and university, he probably feels he needs the money, but is his involvement in a marketing agency (albeit ones that does the majority of its work in sports other than athletics) compatible with the presidency of a world governing body? The word is he will dig in, repeating the defence that he has every safeguard in place to avoid his interests overlapping.

Those personal concerns were on the backburner yesterday. He was fighting for his sport’s soul, asking only to be judged by his deeds.