Athletics: Kosovo, South Sudan voted in to world body

A twice Olympic 1,500 meters champion, and head of the organizers for the 2012 London Olympics, Coe won the presidency by beating Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka 115-92 in a ballot of the IAAF’s 50th Congress.

He proudly maintains that athletics is the number one sport in the Olympic movement, even though the distribution of Olympic revenues to international federations has seen swimming and gymnastics join track and field at the top tier.

First on the agenda for Coe is dealing with the latest doping controversy swirling around track and field, following reports in the German and British media that cited leaked test results from a 2011 study in an IAAF database and asserted that blood doping was rife in the sport.

The move comes amid the ongoing doping furore currently engulfing athletics, which last week saw 28 athletes from the 2005 and 2007 World Championships suspended on suspicion of taking banned substances.

Despite the strong rebuttals, it is clear serious damage has been done to the credibility of the organisation and the sport as a whole, an issue which needs to be addressed urgently.

Paying tribute to the new president, Bubka said: “I know athletics will grow and become stronger”. But few who voted at the IAAF Congress in Beijing can have any doubt as to whether they have found a man utterly committed to athletics and with a true determination to rebuild it.

Said Tang, 61: “Obviously, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t take this home”. “That is something… I will want to discuss with priority”.

“This has been a very, very long, hard tough campaign”, he said, “But it has given sport chance to pause for breath, to review itself, renew itself, think about what the next 30 or 40 years look like”. “That means we have the highest leadership of IAAF as our allies”. “This is my life”.

The 58-year-old replaces Lamine Diack, the Senegalese 82-year-old who held the position since 1999, four terms.

Outgoing president Diack added: “The white-haired generation has done what it could, and now over to the black-haired generation”.