Lord Coe insists Eugene world championships 2021 vote was fair and honest

Lord Coe, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, has denied any wrongdoing in the awarding of the 2021 World Championships to Eugene, as French prosecutors opened an investigation into “whether corruption, money-laundering and criminal conspiracy offences” had been committed.

The American city, which is indelibly linked to Nike, was awarded the championships in April without a bidding process, despite interest from Gothenburg in Sweden.

Former Nike ambassador Coe, who gave up his £100,000-a-year role with the sportswear company last month after becoming IAAF president in August, had already been questioned on the issue of Eugene 2021 by a Parliamentary select committee in London last week. An email from a Nike executive to the Eugene bid chief suggested Coe had “reached out” to his IAAF predecessor Lamine Diack over the city’s bid.

Coe reiterated today his stance that there had been no impropriety over the Eugene bid. Questioned about the lack of a bidding process on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “That’s not without precedent. We’ve selected cities without a bidding cycle. Eugene was not put forward by the IAAF but by US Track and Field… as the best opportunity in the foreseeable future to get athletics into the United States. Every sport is falling over itself to get in the largest sports market in the world.”

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The French financial prosecutors investigating Diack and the former IAAF anti-doping chief Gabriel Dollé on charges of bribery, corruption and money-laundering, revealed they were widening their investigation to include Eugene 2021 as a result of the email involving Coe.

In the email dated 15 January from Nike executive Craig Masback to the Eugene bid leader Vin Lananna, Masback wrote of a conversation with Coe: “He made clear his support for 2021 in Eugene but made equally clear that he had reached out to Diack specifically on this topic and got a clear statement from Diack that ‘I am not going to take any action at that April meeting to choose a 2021 site’.”

Diack later reneged on that and instead approved the vote in April, which awarded Eugene the World Championships by 23-2 within the IAAF council.

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As a result of the email trail, the French authorities revealed in a statement: “On 1 December 2015, the national financial prosecutor, which had already launched an investigation in August 2015 about acts of bribery and corruption, money-laundering allegedly committed within the IAAF in the treatment of doping cases, has opened a preliminary investigation in order to determine the conditions under which the city of Eugene was designated and whether corruption, money-laundering, criminal conspiracy offences have been committed in France on this occasion.”

Despite the investigation, Eugene chiefs remain confident that the Championships will still take place there in 2021. Lananna said: “We are very proud of and stand by our bid. We are 100 per cent confident that there was nothing outside of what are the norms for an IAAF bid.

“People can be frustrated by whatever process people use but we didn’t create the process. We presented the bid, and it was up to the IAAF council to go ahead and accept it.”

Coe, meanwhile, insisted the scandal engulfing the IAAF was not as bad as that currently facing football’s world governing body, Fifa. “I don’t actually believe that and I’m not remotely walking away from the seriousness of what I’m confronting in the organisation and the international field of play,” Coe said.