Former star Sebastian Coe aims to deliver Olympics for athletes

DPA/London

Coe...does not want to let the athletes down

Sebastian Coe hopes to leave a similar legacy as organiser of the London 2012 Olympics as he did as a gold-medal winning middle distance runner three decades ago. Coe, 55, once held all middle distance world records (if only for an hour in 1980), is the only Olympian to win two 1,500m Olympic golds (1980 and 1984), has two 800m silvers and his former 800m world record 1981-1997 was the longest standing in race history. Chiswick-born Coe tells DPA that he still tries to go for a run “pretty much every other day” because “that’s my sanity,” but that successful delivery of the Games between July 27 and August 12 is the top priority as head of the organising committee LOCOG. With 100 days to go on Wednesday until the opening ceremony, Coe says that being a former athlete himself makes him the best person to organise the third Games in the British capital - with the 11,000 athletes from more than 200 countries his main targets. “Seeing the games through the eyes of a competitor is really an important aspect. That’s not just an emotional connection, it actually makes the project a better project,” he says at the LOCOG headquarters. “If you have the athletes always at the centre of the project you have to deliver a good village. You have to deliver venues that work. You have to make sure that those venues are near to the training venues. You have to make sure that the transportation plans don’t unravel within minutes of an opening ceremony. “All these things are actually important parts of the project. And if you are driven to deliver for the athletes you are probably going to deliver a pretty good Games.” The final aim is clear once the curtain falls on the Olympics and the Paralympics: “I don’t want to let the athletes down. “I want every competitor to look at me and say ‘you did everything you could possibly have done to make my experience both social and competitive the best experience I have ever had at a sporting event.’ That for me is what drives me,” Coe says. Making the athletes happy and leaving a lasting legacy such as Olympic Park and its facilities are important for Coe, who also admits that the eightmn Londoners and the rest of the country will probably not be gripped by Olympic fever until the torch relay sets foot on British soil in mid-May. “The start of the torch relay traditionally unleashes a level of excitement that people don’t even realise now ... That for many people heralds the beginning of the Games,” he says. “Londoners are like what most people are in my country. They’re described as a bit slow-burn. They don’t become fans overnight we are quite reserved in our judgments, but when we actually do get to the point where we decide that this is worth being involved in then people become very loyal to the project.” Coe said that millions of people are engaged in the Games in one way or another, and that an approval rating of 60 to 70% was actually pretty good, given that he considered a 30% approval quite good when he was a politician in the past. “Every organising committee will tell you that in the lead-up to the Games you don’t force feed people to unnatural levels of excitement,” says Coe, who now sits in the House of Lords and is also a vice-president of the ruling athletics body IAAF. Striking a similar note, Coe said he is not concerned by disgruntled taxi drivers, concerns over ticket distribution, whether the already busy London Underground can manage themns of Olympic visitors, and fears that security arrangements could turn the city into a fortress. “I travel on the tube train every morning. I have come here on the tube this morning, I will go home on it tonight. I think it is an extraordinary system ... We do this very well and we will have a plan in place. “Taxi drivers can use 99.9% of London roads ... The primary concern to an Olympic Games is to give precision to the athletes. I am absolutely unbiddable on that issue. “I want people coming to the Games feeling they are in a city of celebration not a city that is siege town,” he says, pointing at London’s experience. “This is not alien territory for us. We stage big global events all the time and sometimes we stage them at the same time. I am confident that everything we can possibly do to make these a safe and secure Games will be done ... We will get this balance right but there is no appetite for risk in this area.” As far as final preparations are concerned, Coe says that everything is on track although a lot of work remains to be done until the flame is lit in the Olympic stadium on July 27 for what are to be 16 unforgettable Olympic and 10 Paralympic days. “We feel a big responsibility ... not just because we want to deliver a Games for the United Kingdom, we have 200 nations that we want to feel warmed and embraced coming to the greatest spectacle of sport that man has ever created,” Coe says.