Coe Faces Judgement Call In Athletics Crisis

Today in Monaco, Sebastian Coe chairs a meeting of the world athletics governing council that ought to present him and his sport an opportunity to take a couple of steps on the long, long road back to credibility.

Instead, he will face questions over his personal judgement raised by his ongoing paid role as an ambassador for Nike, and the perceptions of a conflict of interest that it raises.

The circumstances could barely be more serious. Athletics, and its governing body the IAAF, are in flames.

In the past three weeks, a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report has confirmed systematic state-sponsored doping in Russia, and Coe's predecessor as IAAF president Lamine Diack was placed under criminal investigation in France on suspicion of accepting bribes to cover up doping.

Coe will ask the council to approve several measures designed to put out the fire.

Having already banned Russia, he will set out the hurdles Russia will have to clear to be re-admitted, including the introduction of an anti-doping law and regular, rigorous inspections of the corrupt system exposed by WADA.

He will also present some governance reforms designed to prevent future abuses alleged against Diack.

These are necessary reforms of deeply flawed systems.

But if Coe is to get credit for addressing them he will have to deal with the issue of his £100,000-a-year role with Nike.

This week the BBC revealed Coe discussed a bid for the world athletics championship from Nike's hometown, Eugene, with a senior executive at the company.

Months later Eugene was awarded the 2021 competition without a contest, to the disappointment of rival bidder Gothenburg.

Coe denies lobbying for Eugene, saying he simply encouraged them and Gothenburg to bid.

He also says - correctly - that he has always declared the Nike relationship, both to the House of Lords and the IAAF's ethics committee.

It is also the case that while his IAAF role is unpaid, the Nike arrangement is part of a complex deal linked to Coe's day job as chairman of sports marketing company CSM.

But the issue is not just about what Coe said to whom, or his right to earn a living, but how it appears.

Nike is a billion dollar player in track and field, as well as the company that sponsored proven cheats Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin, and still equips the Russian athletics team.

Its Oregon Project is the base of Mo Farah's coach Alberto Salazar, a friend of Coe's currently under investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency (he denies wrongdoing).

When he is trying to clean up perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in sport it is, at best, a distraction.

After a year that has seen FIFA and now the IAAF exposed, public tolerance and credulity for those who run sport is waning, even for Coe, a man who has enjoyed a decade of acclaim and good press for his Olympic exploits.

He has been repeatedly advised to park the Nike deal. This may be time, to borrow their phrase, to just do it.