The ultimate test

Olympic champion, Seb Coe, on what the Games mean.

Lord Coe, Chair, London 2012 Organising Committee

ZEINAB BADAWI: So Seb Coe good morning to you and ...

SEBASTIAN COE: Good morning.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Just first of all tell us, cast your mind back to nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty four, when you were competing, winning all those medals for us.

I mean what's it like? It must be a really nerve-racking time.

SEBASTIAN COE: It's five days out from an opening ceremony for any competitor frankly, whether they're capable of getting up onto the rostrum - and Sue picked out some of our real medal hopefuls.

But it's a very scratchy and nervy period for everybody involved. You know what we have to remember is by the time we see those athletes in that stadium or whatever arena they're in they've probably devoted more than half their young lives ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: My God, years and years ....

SEBASTIAN COE: ... to ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... of training.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... to being there. I, I started in track and field at the age of twelve. I didn't make an Olympic Games until I was twenty three. That by any stretch of the imagination ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: So it's a really ....

SEBASTIAN COE: ... is a long, long apprenticeship.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Because it's crunch time after all those years of training ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah.

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... and it's over very quickly.

SEBASTIAN COE: And this comes round every four years. This isn't something that you can, you can mess up and then next year there's another Wimbledon or there's another Flushing Meadows or there is another tournament. You have to wait four years for that to come back again.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Seeing you there winning your Olympic medals there. I mean is that the pinnacle of every athlete's ambition to get to the Olympics and win a medal?

SEBASTIAN COE: I think if, if you start dreaming as a youngster the dream is, is obviously to compete at the highest level. The dream is hopefully to wear a British vest. And if you really dare to dream it's to wear a British vest in an Olympic arena. And I think the Olympics for all competitors, wherever they are, is the ultimate test. It's the ultimate challenge.

ZEINAB BADAWI: But winning the medals, I mean the Sports Minister Jerry Sutcliffe for instance as I said, we've got to judge our athletes. We've put all these millions of pounds into training them. We want to see the medals brought home.

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah I think that, that's not unreasonable.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Fair enough.

SEBASTIAN COE: I mean if you look at, if you look at our performance in Sydney and you look at our performance in Athens, they were, both those performances - and they were good and we had some great British moments - they were the result of some quite seriously targeted funding. And this time there's probably twenty million more that's gone into this team than the team that competed in Athens. And Sue is right. This is probably the best prepared and the most talented team that we've taken overseas.

ZEINAB BADAWI: And what's it like mingling? You have to mingle with your competitors do you? Somebody said it's like being at one big boarding school. You have to have your meals with your ....

SEBASTIAN COE: I, I didn't, I didn't go to a boarding school but I can tell you that forty minutes before a race when there are nine or ten of you sitting in a, in an area probably not much bigger than this square we're sitting on now and one of you is sitting there thinking, well you're all thinking won.... I wonder in a few minutes who's going to make the history. You learn a lot about yourself in forty minutes before a championship.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Yeah that must be nerve-racking too. But just going to the wider picture. Of course ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah.

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... obviously these Olympics are in Beijing. We've had President ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah.

ZEINAB BADAWI: .... Hu Jintao just making an appeal... on Friday to journalists not to politicise these games. But the fact of the matter is these are highly controversial games. I mean Tibet, all the other human rights abuses, the Falon gong, that kind of thing. I mean what should, would you feel at all uneasy, would you feel uneasy about competing?

SEBASTIAN COE: Remember I went through a lot of this in Moscow in nineteen eighty. Up until a few weeks before those games most of my coll... most of my mates in the team weren't even sure they'd be competing. And we had to sit down and think very seriously about some of the implications of competing. Athletes, contrary to popular belief, athletes are not sort of unthinking ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Their brains in their boots, no.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... unthinking automatons. I mean we do, we are actually probably as a group more perceptive about the world because of the nature of what we've had to witness very early on in our careers.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Let's just remind people. That's the nineteen eighties ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Nineteen eighty yeah ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... when there was, nineteen eighties ....

SEBASTIAN COE: ... and I went ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... and I went to ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Right.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... to Moscow in the face of, of opposition from, from the .... from the government at the time.

ZEINAB BADAWI: 'Cause the Americans, Jimmy Carter pulled their athletes ....

SEBASTIAN COE: The Americans, the Americans started the boycott. Afghanistan entered the Soviet U.... Soviet Union entered Afghanistan. There was a strong view that international sport being the biggest thing that year should, should pay the price. Our view was look, look at it across the board. I suppose the turning point for me was being lectured about not going to Moscow in the same week that the Bolshoi Ballet arrived in London and B....

ZEINAB BADAWI: 'Cause in fact ....

SEBASTIAN COE: ... and BP signed an oil contract. So ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Oh right. 'Cause you think, 'cause the Thatcher government was quite keen at the time to ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah very, we went, we ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... pull out the athletes.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... we went against her wishes. And actually of course I tend to feel, not in its entirety, but I tend to feel that I was in, I was witnessing the infancy of change. And we have to say that international sport has brought more countries, more communities together than it's ever divided. It wasn't politicians remember that brought North and South Korea into a stadium as, as one team in two thousand. It was the International Olympic Committee, it was the movement, so sport ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: So you think it brings ....

SEBASTIAN COE: ... achieves a massive amount, yes. But it's not ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Reform.

SEBASTIAN COE: ... the, it's not the universal panacea. It can't be in the front row, front line of politics.

ZEINAB BADAWI: But still if you're saying that athletes do think they're not you know as I said brains in their boots ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Yeah.

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... and so on. I mean but what do you do? Turn a blind eye to all those human rights abuses? I mean despite the reforms there, you know we get reports all the time about activists being locked up and I mean you know web sites are still blocked.

SEBASTIAN COE: You have to be very careful about picking your sporting partners on current or temporary or even what you think are going to be future political relationships because in essence you won't have international sport. And I cling very firmly from experience and opportunity for young people to use international sport to further those, those levels of understanding. We don't live in a ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Okay so when ....

SEBASTIAN COE: .... perfect world. It is a very complex place. But the Olympic movement has consistently helped produce change whether it's about the para Olympic movement changing the attitude to disability and South Korea in the Games of eighty eight.

ZEINAB BADAWI: The power of sport.

SEBASTIAN COE: The power of sport is immense.

ZEINAB BADAWI: So, so when Nick Clegg the Liberal Democrat Leader says Gordon Brown should boycott the Closing Ceremony you obviously think that's not the right thing to do ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Well I think it flies in the face of, I think it actually flies in the face of history. Sporting boycotts have rarely achieved what they've set out to do. I ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: .... you know South Africa, I mean ....

SEBASTIAN COE: I think that ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: .... bring down Apartheid didn't it?

SEBASTIAN COE: But that's a very different, that's a very different issue. That was .... that was, that was abnormal sport in an abnormal country.

ZEINAB BADAWI: All right.

SEBASTIAN COE: I didn't go to South Africa because I didn't feel that I would be competing against the best ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: All right.

SEBASTIAN COE: .... that, that were, were on offer.

ZEINAB BADAWI: I must ask you about the Hand Over Ceremony because you get the last ten minutes of the Closing Ceremony ....

SEBASTIAN COE: It's not quite ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: .... in Beijing isn't it?

SEBASTIAN COE: Don't worry me. It's not quite ten, it's eight minutes.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Is it?

SEBASTIAN COE: And our, our team ....

ZEINAB BADAWI: Well it's almost ten.

SEBASTIAN COE: Our teams are over there now. It's a huge global moment for us.

ZEINAB BADAWI: What can we expect? Is it going to be a sort of curtain raiser on what we can expect ....?

SEBASTIAN COE: No. What, what we won't be doing, we won't be producing our own Opening Ceremony in somebody else's Closing Ceremony. Eight minutes is, is a very short period. So it'll be, it'll be about London, it'll be about us. And it's just revealing a little bit of our DNA as we go forward.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Okay, well Seb Coe thanks very much for coming in. I know you're going off to the airport right now so mustn't detain you 'cause you're on your way to Beijing. And I don't know how say good bye in - oh it's nee ha for hello isn't it but ....

SEBASTIAN COE: Sue seems to be the linguist.

ZEINAB BADAWI: Sue seems to be the fluent Mandarin speaker yes. Thanks very much and ....

SEBASTIAN COE: My pleasure.

ZEINAB BADAWI: ... best of luck for Team GB.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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