IAAF president Coe parts ways with Nike

Coe acts as a paid ambassador to Nike and on Tuesday the BBC said it had seen an e-mail in which a Nike executive said Coe had assured him he would “reach out” to Diack on behalf of Eugene.

The report came as the International Association of Athletics Federations council met in Monaco with mounting pressure on Coe over the Oregon-based multinational sportswear firm and doping in Russia.

The situation was “not good for IAAF and not good for Nike”.

“It is clear that perception and reality have become horribly mangled”.

Mr. Coe said his decision to part ways with Nike was a part of an effort to renew trust in IAAF’s leadership.

When elected, Coe lavished praised on Diack, who was IAAF president from 1999, and hit out at those who suggested athletics had a problem with doping. The film claimed that ARD and British newspaper The Sunday Times had obtained a leaked database belonging to the worldwide Association of Athletics Federations, which contained more than 12,000 blood tests from around 5,000 athletes in the years 2001 to 2012.

Its Council, which meets again in Monaco today, has banned Russian Federation from all athletics following the publication of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) independent commission report that uncovered systematic and widespread state-supported doping and cover-ups in the country.

“I and our teams are working to steady the ship”.

Despite the accusations of foul play, particularly from Bjorn Eriksson, who led the Gothenburg bird, Coe has maintained he had nothing to do with the decision, which was handed down last April. We covered several topics but I asked specifically about 2021. Eugene was awarded the championships, the first in the US, without an open bidding process. “That’s for the sport, for everybody involved”, he said.

That rules Russian athletes out of the World Indoor Championships in Portland, to be held earlier in March, and they must now hope the issues are resolved in order to be cleared to compete in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which begin in August. “There is no reason that we can not get that going over the next 10 days or two weeks”, Coe said.

Meanwhile, American decathlete Ashton Eaton and Ethiopia’s Genzebe Dibaba, the 1500m world record holder and world champion, were named IAAF world athletes of the year.

Fredericks also confirmed the appointment of six new members of the athletes’ commission – Fabiana Murer, Paula Radcliffe, Alina Talay, Michael Frater, Ezekiel Kemboi and Eaton – to serve between 2016 and 2019.