- Thomas Bach is said to have planned to prevent Lord Coe from succeeding him
- Seven members will complete the election for the presidency of IOC on Thursday
- Former champion Kirsty Coventry is believed to be Bach’s favourite candidate
Outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach is said to be ‘hitting the phones hard’ in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Lord Coe succeeding him as sport’s most powerful figure.
Mail Sport understands that the current regime in Lausanne want ‘anyone but Coe’ ahead of the election of the organisation’s next supremo taking place in the Greek harbour town of Pylos on Thursday.
The 109 members of the IOC will cast their preferences in a poll that is notoriously hard to call.
There are seven contenders all making their final plays, but three figures are believed to be leading the way: Coe; IOC vice-president Juan Antonio Samaranch Jnr of Spain; and multiple Olympic swimming champion Kirsty Coventry, Zimbabwe’s sports minister.
Coventry, 41, is believed to be Bach’s favoured replacement.
Coe is standing as a reform candidate, promising more transparency, as well as backing women’s rights in the transgender row convulsing sport. As president of World Athletics, a position he has held for a decade, he has also taken a strong stance against Russia.
IOC president Thomas Bach (left) is reportedly planning to stop Lord Seb Coe (right) from succeding him
Meanwhile, Kirsty Coventry is believed to be Bach’s favoured replacement
Aged 68, Coe is the most well-known of the candidates, as a double Olympic champion at the blue-riband 1500 metres in 1980 and 1984, and as chairman of the super-successful London 2012 Games. He is backed by Usain Bolt.
Yet Coe is seen as too unreliable and too much of a maverick by Germany’s former foil fencer Bach, who, it is argued, was annoyed by World Athletics ‘blindsiding them’ by offering prize-money of $50,000 £39,000 to track-and-field gold medallists at the Paris Olympics last year.
‘Bach has been on hitting the phone over the last few days to members to make his views clear,’ one insider told Mail Sport.
‘The election is too opaque to call authoritatively. It’s a confidential election and people promise their votes to all the main candidates, of which Seb is clearly one. It is an electorate like no other.’
An IOC spokesman said: ‘We are not commenting on rumours.’
