World Athletics President Sebastian Coe held a wide-ranging discussion with members of the European Athletics Future Leaders Forum in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, on Friday (7).Between sessions at the European Athletics Indoor Championships, Coe sat down with five young athletics enthusiasts – many of whom are currently working in member federations – and discussed the keys to strong governance, the goals of successful sporting bodies, the innovations that can engage new fans and the role of artificial intelligence in the sport’s future.The five future leaders – Lex Damit of Luxembourg, Kaja Arh of Slovenia, Michiel Bienes of Belgium, Ilgin Yuksel of Turkiye and Jens Tybout of the Netherlands – quizzed Coe on a variety of topics and shared their own experiences in the sport, from participation to viewership to governance.The Future Leaders’ mission is to promote volunteer work and grassroots projects in athletics to help members develop themselves and contribute to sport and local communities. “It’s quite a well-trodden path from this leadership group to taking really serious roles in the sport,” said Coe, who explained to them how, and why, he made gender equality a priority for the World Athletics Council.“One of the challenges in every organisation is young people tend not just to see us as a sporting organisation,” he said. “They ask a more fundamental question which is: ‘Do you look like the world I live in?’ And if you don’t, then they move on very quickly. I’m still disappointed we’re even having these discussions (about gender equality), but I hope in 10 years’ time, this isn’t a matter of debate. It’s what good organisations do.”All five of the Future Leaders had competitive backgrounds in athletics and all are still deeply invested in the sport through varied roles. Asked about the importance of diversity and inclusion, and making sure athletics is available to all, Coe said: “The missing word in everything we are trying to do is accessibility. You can have diversity, you can have inclusion, but actually removing the barriers and giving people incentive and ability to come into your organisation, whether a female administrator or groups who want to run marathons but just have too many barriers, the accessibility element of our sport is often overlooked. For me, it’s diversity, inclusion and accessibility.”
Arh took up the point and explained to Coe what she saw as the two key pillars of accessibility. “The first one is the communities and actually bringing people to the sport,” she said. “The second is accessibility of leadership, having people with diverse voices, diverse backgrounds, in leadership roles.”Coe explained that one of his key priorities when elected World Athletics President was to review the decision-making process in the organisation and ensure it was “member-based and transparent.”
He also shared stories from his time as Chairman of the Local Organising Committee for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, telling the Future Leaders: “We actually had more senior directors that were women than men, and it wasn’t because we were quota filling,” he said. “The best people emerge. My instinct used to be that good people will always come through the system; actually they don’t. You have to remove the barriers.”
Coe discussed the five key areas of good sporting bodies, stating they should put athletes “at the heart of everything they do”.
“We’ve got to think of our athletes almost as a commercial partner and that’s not just about prize money, what caught the headlines, but how do we share the information and data we hold that athletes should be able to access? Data that will help you understand who watches you, where they watch you, how they engage with what you do. These things can help create some financial upside away from the field of play.”
Arh highlighted the importance of programmes like the Future Leaders Forum, saying: “People aren’t aware of the opportunities to stay in athletics after they’re done competing.” Coe agreed. “I hope they stay on as coaches and administrators, stay on the path you guys have taken,” he said. “We’ve got to understand how to articulate what we do better. We need to recognise that it needs to be a professional pathway, particularly for women.”
Bienes outlined how he believed artificial intelligence (AI) would have a positive impact on athletics, personalising the viewing experience to give them more of what they want.
“You’ve touched on a really interesting area,” Coe told him. “AI can quintessentially help you with an audience-first approach. Formula One does it really well, most of the American sports do it really well. It’s engaging with young people, listening to what the audience is telling us, understanding what they want to watch, when they want to watch it and, critically, how they want to watch it. It has to be a barrier-free experience.”
Coe said AI could “change the landscape” for talent identification, particularly in smaller nations that don’t have huge resources, and he believed the impact of AI on athletics will be overwhelmingly positive. “I listen to the doom, people telling me your sport is going to be run by AI, but it’s up to us whether we allow it to have primacy,” he said. “We’ve got to stop talking about AI and start implementing it.”
Coe said AI will also play a big role in anti-doping, noting how the Athletics Integrity Unit is working with a university in Nice to “be more predictive, identify risk in mass data and be more targeted at how you use your resources”, adding it will “help turbo-charge intelligence-led testing.”
Lex Damit, chair of the Future Leaders Facilitator Team, thanked Coe for the chance to engage on various topics. “It’s mainly being listened to, having a seat at the table and being able to share what we think is the future,” he said. “We are the next generation of leaders so including us and the sustainability of leadership is important. Seb wants to future-proof the sport and think about the next generation of people to take over.”
Liese Schroven, Development Manager for European Athletics, said the Future Leaders Forum offered a “direct connection to the youth community” and is something that’s “very necessary” to take the sport to a higher level. “It’s amazing to see what a project can bring to people’s lives,” she said.
Cathal Dennehy for World Athletics
