ATHENS:
World Athletics’ resolution to begin providing prize cash to Olympic champions shouldn’t be seen as a template for all different sports activities, the physique’s chief Sebastian Coe, who runs for president of the Worldwide Olympic Committee, mentioned on Friday.
Coe, a former Olympic champion who additionally led the 2012 London Olympics, is considered one of seven candidates campaigning to exchange outgoing IOC chief Thomas Bach, with the vote set for March 20 on the physique’s session in Greece.
World Athletics introduced its prize cash for gold medallists resolution unilaterally forward of final 12 months’s Paris Video games with out session with the IOC, of which Coe is a member, or different worldwide sports activities federations.
The choice angered the IOC and a few federations on the time which opposed such a transfer, saying not all athletes had been benefiting from it. World Athletics has mentioned it can provide prize cash to all medallists within the sport on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
“Prize cash was applied by the game in response to a really particular subject in observe and discipline,” Coe mentioned in a convention name with information companies, including observe and discipline athletes had been being recruited by different sports activities. “We gave them (an) incentive to stay within the sport.”
The Briton, nevertheless, mentioned ought to he win the election subsequent week he wouldn’t implement such a mannequin for different sports activities.
“No person within the Olympic panorama ought to conclude that as a result of I had a mandate in World Athletics… that this can be a one-size-fits-all. That I instantly stroll straight into the (IOC) workplace in Lausanne subsequent week and inform everyone they’re taking prize cash,” he mentioned.
“Completely not. I’d encourage the dialogue about what extra can we do to create true and real business companions out of our athletes.”
“No person ought to run away with the thought of a one-size-fits-all. It’s a collaborative dialogue,” Coe added.
Coe is up towards a number of Olympic swimming champion Kirsty Coventry, who’s Zimbabwe’s sports activities minister, in addition to Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, son of the late former IOC president.