Lord of the rings

IT was October 1968, and in the hall of a secondary modern school in Sheffield, a group of boys gathered in front of a grainy black and white television to watch David Hemery win gold for Britain in the final of the Olympic 400 metres hurdles. But it was the man who came in third who provided the inspiration for one of those boys.

"That day some of my classmates thought what fun they had missing double maths," Lord Coe later recalled. "For me, the bronze for John Sherwood from my home town made me determined to be part of the Olympics."

Sheffield boy John Sherwood may have been largely forgotten in the euphoria which surrounded Hemery's win, but for Coe it was the start of a lifelong passion for the Olympic movement.

It was this passion which saw him become one of the greatest ever Olympians, the only man to retain the 1,500m title. And now it has seen him lead London to victory in the race to hold the 2012 Olympic Games.

But it was a race once all but given up as lost. It was just 14 months ago that London's bid was in disarray. The team's organisation was in chaos, morale was low, there were complaints of a lack of leadership and decision-making and public and political support for the bid was lukewarm. And at the lowest point came a scathing IOC report which criticised London's transport system and the siting of venues, placing the bid third behind Paris and Madrid.

It was in the wake of this report that original bid chairman Barbara Cassani resigned. Cassani, an American businesswoman who founded the low-budget Go airline, swapped places with Coe, previously the bid's vice-chairman, although she was later to leave the team altogether.

Coe set about transforming the bid, tackling the technical shortcomings the IOC report identified. He injected a new passion and focus into the bid team. He brought in consultants who had worked on the Sydney 2000 Games and turned transport into a major plus.

He used his political contacts to widen support for the bid and worked tirelessly to promote London's cause, rising at 5.45am for 18-hour days, and becoming a master of detail. He flew around the world, including heading for a presentation in Australia the day after his mother's funeral.

As well as a keen administrator, he proved a master diplomat, establishing a smooth relationship with London Mayor Ken Livingstone, something beyond most of the Labour leadership over the last 20 years.

Just as important was his standing within the Olympic movement. As the only man to successfully defend the 1,500m, he has a place in the pantheon of Olympic greats, and he used his personal contacts to great effect. His ability to approach the bid from an athlete's point of view put him at an advantage over the other bid leaders.

Coe's passion for leaving a sporting legacy and inspiring the next generation of Olympians, and his emphasis not on the regeneration of East London but on the regeneration of sport, have been crucial in turning around the bid's fortunes and recovering the ground lost on early favourite Paris. Public support for the bid rose from being the second worst out of all the five bidding cities, with only New York lower, to second highest, behind only Madrid.

"Seb Coe is fantastic. Before he took over, London was nothing. Now they have a great bid," said respected former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, a long-time Coe admirer.

And just as Coe reinvented London's bid, he reinvented himself. From an athlete regarded as aloof and superior, a politician with a reputation for a short attention span and unwillingness to put in the hours required, and a speaker lacking passion, Coe became the bid's greatest asset, using the same determination which had carried him to his first taste of Olympic glory, 25 years ago.

Sebastian Newbold Coe was born in Fulham - although he supports Chelsea - in 1956, the eldest of four children, but as a child moved to Sheffield when his father Peter took up a job as an engineer in the steel industry.

It was Peter who spotted the athletic ability in his son and made himself his coach, instilling a fiercely competitive spirit and using unstintingly tough training methods. When Coe was 17, Peter announced his son would take five seconds off the 1,500m world record. It may have been some pressure to pile on his son, but Coe proved unfazed. In the space of 41 days in 1979 he set world records in the 800m, mile and 1,500m, earning him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award that year.

His rivalry with fellow middle distance runner Steve Ovett took the sport to new heights of popularity. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, you were either for Coe or for Ovett. You couldn't be for both. The two were opposites. Coe was the middle class graduate, elegant and clean-cut. Ovett was the working class grafter, rough and determined. Between them, they dominated middle distance running for almost a decade.

But Coe got the chance to show his own battling qualities at the 1980 Olympics. Defying a demand from Margaret Thatcher to boycott the Moscow Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Coe was hot favourite for the 800m. But it was Ovett who triumphed. When Coe caught his breath, he told reporters: "Tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle."

A few days later the pair met in the final of the 1,500m, Ovett's preferred distance and the one over which he had not lost in 42 races. This time it was Coe who won gold, his face a study in grim determination as he crossed the line. It was his first public demonstration of his ability to pick himself up after defeat.

Four years later, in Los Angeles, Coe repeated the feat, overcoming a blood disease which had disrupted his training, and earning himself Olympic greatness. He would have defended the title for a second time at Seoul in 1988, had illness again not affected his training and prevented him from making the final of the British Olympic trials. Samaranch, then IOC president, tried to get the rules changed to allow defending champions automatic qualification, but without success.

The following year, Coe retired from athletics, after a career in which he had set 12 world records, including a mark for the 800m which stood for 16 years. But it was also a career in which he had gained a reputation as aloof and superior, charges levelled by Linford Christie during a public spat.

During his racing days, he had become athletics' first self-made millionaire with astute sponsorship deals, as well as leading the demands for athletes to be given proper financial rewards. After retirement, he enhanced his fortune with a string of health clubs and other business ventures.

His father Peter had also passed on his Conservative politics, and in 1992 Coe was elected Tory MP for Falmouth and Camborne in Cornwall. He quickly became a parliamentary private secretary, the first rung on the ministerial ladder, and then a government whip, but he failed to shine. His public speaking was derided as wooden and his fellow Parliamentarians voted him one of the "least impressive" of the 1992 intake.

In 1997, he lost his seat in the Labour landslide, but bounced back to become private secretary to Richmond MP and new Tory leader William Hague. The pair famously grappled on the judo mat, but Coe was criticised for his poor grasp of detail and after the Tories lost the 2001 election, the newly-ennobled Lord Coe left Central Office, returning to his business interests before London 2012 called.

When London decided to bid for the Games, Coe was the obvious choice to lead the team for many, including Samaranch, who is reported to have said: "Leader for London bid? Why, you have Sebastian Coe."

But if Coe was not the first choice, just like his trademark surges on the track to win from just behind the leader, he got there in the end. And if his determination and passion has been brought to bear on making London the choice for the 2012 Olympics, it has just as importantly turned him into the man who made it happen. While the nation was once divided by the Coe-Ovett rivalry, yesterday he has succeeded in uniting sports lovers by bringing the Olympics to London.