The days get longer and longer as we get closer to the World Champs. Press conferences, meetings, and catching up with media friends, federation friends, managers, athletes and sponsors become part of the daily plan. Juggling the business needs in US are also part of the equation, as offices are 15 hours behind.
Holiday Inn Express, Beijing, (note the Amazon bike cart), photo by Larry Eder
Beijing Diaries
Day Three
August 19, 2015
Seb Coe is elected IAAF President
In a hotly contested election, Seb Coe won the IAAF Presidency, over
Sergey Bubka, 115 votes to 92. With this difference of 23 votes, it
came quite close to what Franco Fava told me back in May in Doha:
“the election would be very close.”
The IAAF Congress was hard at work on Wednesday, as they enacted
several significant bits of legislation. One sets age limits on
elected officials, noting that the age of 70 is reached, during
that year, one can not stand for either election or re election.
Another noted that at least one of the four IAAF Vice Presidents
must be a women, which will put some women into the IAAF
hierarchy. And the third, noted that an IAAF President can not
run for more than three consecutive elections.
The news of the day was the victory by Seb Coe, who made it clear
that he was putting all of his proverbial cards on the table.
Seb Coe was written about by British media from fawning to already
finding criticisms, such as “too nice” to be real, and a critique
of his accusation that ARD and Sunday Times had declare war on
his sport.
The sport does need a champion. Coe gets that. He also sees that, for
the sport to prosper and grow, it needs to move out of the drug
testing world and focus on building the sport, allowing a new
and independent organization to find and punish the cheaters.
I found the presser interesting, and thought that Seb Coe handled
it quite well. He answered the questions deftly and with precision.
I wrote until late at night, and after getting back to my hotel,
had a conference call with the Milk PEP people and my rep group
in NYC.
It was about 11 when I headed out for dinner, and found one place open,
which meant I had to walk down the long alley way and climb over a small
fence.
Tofu and Mushrooms
The cafe had some guys drinking beer when I entered. The Chinese young women
found a picture menu for me. I picked the tofu and mushrooms and a large
bowl of tomato and egg soup. With an ice cold beverage, they were perfect.The waitresses watched me intently, and repeated my “Thankyou” and “Hi” a couple of times, as they were as curious of me as I was of them.
The walk back was uneventful, and knowing that I had a full day, after having
posted 11 stories, it was time to collapse.
Day Four would come quick enough.
