Battle for the IOC presidency: It’s going well for the Briton Sebastian Coe

More democracy for members, better protection for women’s sports: Briton Sebastian Coe is well on his way to becoming the front runner among the candidates for the IOC presidency. He wants to do many things differently than his predecessor Thomas Bach.

It was a special place where Sebastian Coe recently launched the election campaign for the highest office in world sport. The 68-year-old had invited British reporters to the 21st floor of a tower in the London district of Stratford. There the view opened up onto an area that a decade earlier had been “520 hectares full of mud and junkyards,” as Coe said. And whatever wild animals were crawling around there, says Coe, “had hardly seen daylight for 60 years.”