Lord Coe weighs up bid to become IOC president despite puzzling election rules

Lord Coe is still weighing up a bid to become president of the International Olympic Committee despite election rules that appear to cast doubt on his potential candidacy.

The 67-year-old double Olympic champion is currently the president of World Athletics and, in a letter this week from the IOC ethics committee to its 111 members, which include Coe and the Princess Royal, a series of criteria were detailed.

These include the need for a candidate to be an IOC member, which Coe is by virtue of his role leading World Athletics, but also how the new president could not remain at the helm of an international federation.

More encouragingly, an additional paragraph in the letter said that “this conflict could be resolved only if, after the election of the IOC president, the IOC session held another vote for a change of membership status”.

With Coe’s job at World Athletics ending in 2027, he would need to become an IOC member by another route. That is potentially complicated, however, by the absence of any British vacancies just now following the election of Sir Hugh Robertson, the former British sports minister, as an IOC member earlier this year.

There is also the question of age. IOC members generally lose their status at 70 but can apply for one four-year extension, and the eight-year term of presidency runs from 2025 until 2033 when Coe would be 76.

This rule was also outlined in the letter but there has been a suggestion that this could be extended in certain situations and members who were co-opted before 1999 are already an exception and have an age limit of 80.

The ethics committee letter stresses that the winning candidate must be an IOC member both on election day, in March next year, “and during the entire duration of their term as IOC president”.

The letter itself does not mention Coe, who said ahead of the Olympic closing ceremony that he would seriously consider running, and it remains unclear whether any application from the 1980 and 1984 Olympic 1500m gold medallist would be accepted.

Other candidates would also be potentially affected by the rules, including Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, the IOC vice-president, who turns 65 in November and David Lappartient, who is president of cycling’s global governing body.

Coe has won praise for his leadership at World Athletics since 2015 – notably in overseeing the formation of the Athletics Integrity Unit to oversee anti-doping – and has been willing to diverge from the IOC position on major issues including the eligibility of Russian athletes, preventing transgender women from competing in the female category and prize money for gold medallists.

He set out his considerable wider experiences last month ahead of Sunday’s deadline for putting his name forward to be a candidate. “I have chaired an Olympic Games from bid to delivery and two years of legacy after that,” said Coe. “I have been privileged to compete in two Olympic Games. I have chaired a national Olympic committee, and I now have the best job in the world as president of the number one Olympic sport.”

The IOC will publish a list of candidates on Monday.