Lord Coe cuts ties with Nike after conflict-of-interest controversy

Lord Coe severed his links to Nike last night despite maintaining they did not represent a conflict of interests and declaring “perception and reality” had become “horribly mangled”.

Amid mounting pressure to give up his paid role with the sportswear giant, the International Association of Athletics Federations president announced he had reluctantly terminated the £100,000-a-year deal.

Coe went public with the decision two days after an email emerged showing he had discussed the award of the 2021 World Championships to Eugene with a senior executive at Nike. Denying that the revelation had any bearing on his decision, Coe nevertheless admitted the “noise” around his ambassadorial role at a time when the IAAF is engulfed by sport’s biggest drugs scandal had convinced him to let it go.

Making a point of revealing the IAAF’s ethics commission had cleared him to keep the position with the sportswear giant, he said: “It is clear that perception and reality have become horribly mangled. The current noise level around this ambassadorial role is not good for the IAAF and it is not good for Nike. And, frankly, it is a distraction to the 18-hour days that I and are teams are working to steady the ship.”

Coe also confirmed he would stand down as chairman of the British Olympic Association after next summer’s Rio Games and had imposed an embargo on the sports marketing firm he chairs, CSM, tendering for work with the IAAF or any city in relation to the governing body.

Speaking after an IAAF council meeting in Monaco, Coe said dealing with the crisis that has seen his predecessor, Lamine Diack, and other senior officials arrested on suspicion of taking bribes to cover up doping – and

Coe denied the leaked email exchange between a senior executive at the firm and the 2021 World Championships bid leaders from Eugene – which is a Nike stronghold – suggested otherwise. The correspondence shows that Craig Masback, business affairs director of Nike’s Global Sports, relayed a conversation with Coe about the bidding process to the Eugene team. That process ended up being scrapped, with the American city awarded the IAAF’s flagship event in April to the fury of a rival bid from Gothenburg.

“As an ambassador of Nike, I would have been discharging my duties as per normal,” said Coe, who insisted he gave identical information about the status of the process to both bidders. "I was being asked that question a on daily basis by many, many people, including the media.”

Coe appears set to be compensated for the loss of his Nike job by becoming a paid IAAF president, something that would require the support of his council colleagues. Frankie Fredericks, the chairman of the IAAF’s athletes’ commission, said: “The athletes’ commission would want somebody at the helm – especially after what Seb has given up – to be paid, to get remunerated, to make sure that he gives a professional job for the sake of the athletes.”

The former sprinting star declared it “sad” that Coe had been pressurised into giving up Nike. “In all fairness to the president, we all serve on various boards of directors,” he said. “If the interest was declared, I think we could manage as an organisation in terms of how to deal with the situation.”

Conservative MP Damian Collins, a member of the Culture, Media & Sport select committee that will grill Coe next week over athletics’s various scandals, said the issue was far from closed.

Coe vowed to act if any evidence of corruption emerged over that decision or those to hand the next two editions of the event to London and Doha during the French criminal inquiry into Diack and others or the World Anti-Doping Agency investigation into the IAAF.

Announcing that the IAAF’s independent ethics commission had also been expanded, he said: “If any of those show or conclude impropriety then, of course, action will be taken.”