Lord Sebastian Coe Is The New IAAF President

Sebastian Coe was elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Wednesday after beating Ukraine's Sergey Bubka by 115 votes to 92 in a ballot of the governing body's 50th Congress.


The Briton takes over as head of a sport battling a public relations crisis with the IAAF accused of failing in its duty to address doping amid allegations that blood doping was rife in athletics.

The former Olympic 1,500 meters champion will replace Senegalese Lamine Diack, who has run the body for the last 16 years, at the end of the Aug. 22-30 world championships in Beijing.


Coe has aggressively defended the IAAF's record on doping over the last three weeks, saying the organization had "led the way" on out-of-competition testing and laboratories, and introduced blood passports in 2009 to help weed out the cheats.

Coe has previously said that under his leadership the sport would move towards setting up its own anti-doping agency.
Source: Reuters