Mo Farah backs Sebastian Coe to save crisis-hit athletics

Britain’s Sebastian Coe or Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka will be elected president of the sport’s governing body at Congress today along with a fresh council.

World athletics boss Lamine Diack opened the meeting which will choose his successor on Wednesday with a defiant stab at track and field’s doping detractors, saying they had painted the sport as a “monster”.

A long, difficult road ahead awaits the next IAAF president, but it is a task double Olympic champion Farah believes Coe is capable of succeeding in.

The 58-year-old Briton will have to face accusations that the body failed to tackle, or even covered up, widespread doping in some of the world’s most prestigious competitions.

Athletics’ 214 national federations will decide between Coe, the former London 2012 chief, and 51-year-old Ukrainian Bubka, three days before the 2015 World Championships begin in Beijing.

“I know athletics will grow and become stronger”, Bubka said. Diack said it was important to remember that “everything done in terms of anti-doping in sport comes from athletics”.

Coe, a two-time Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist, former Conservative Party lawmaker in Britain and chairman of the London 2012 bid and organizing committee, reportedly traveled 700,000 kilometers (435,000 miles) during the campaign and, unlike Bubka, had only nominated for the top job without the fallback option of vice-president.

He wished Coe every success to “lead our sport, which we really love – we devoted our life for this great sport”.

“Whoever the IAAF family elects, he will be a bona fide son of our sport”. “If all this stuff is true it is a major crisis, much of which happened on the watch of the current president – and I’m sure he’s concerned”, he said.

“Another two years on, the passport is now well established and it has proved an effective tool not only for pursuing anti-doping rule violations but also as an intelligence source for the target testing of specific athletes”, he added.

The global governing body of athletics is to abandon its policy of drug-testing every athlete during the upcoming world championships in Beijing, the Guardian has learned, with only a third of competitors slated to have their blood taken and scrutinised. “I don’t want people getting the wrong end of the stick”.

“Your fight is my fight”.

“As you have seen in recent weeks I will always be in your corner”, he told them during his presentation.