Sebastian Coe carries the title of Lord, which didn’t help him much when he came up against veteran television broadcaster Jon Snow in an interview after an independent report blew open the lid on doping in Russian athletics on Monday.
In television terms, it was perhaps as bloody as any number of scenes from Game of Thrones, where one of the lead characters bears the same name as the Channel 4 journalist. Coe was gutted and slashed, his main argument reminding of one of the most famous lines from the TV series: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” Or rather, “I know nothing, Jon Snow.”
Here’s some of the transcript: Jon Snow: “You’re one of the greatest sportsmen that have ever run for Britain, and yet you became president of an organisation which turns out to have been desperately corrupt at the very top, desperately failing on the job it had, and surely people would have thought: ‘He of all people will carry the baton, and scour this place for this kind of stuff’?”
Seb Coe: “Jon, that is my responsibility now.”
JS: “Lord Coe that simply isn’t going to wash. You were deputy president, you were the number two in the entire outfit, and you made no effort to scour the place for drugs.”
SC: “No Jon, I was deputy chairman, vice president, in an organisation but those allegations have come as a shock to all of us.”
JS: “Either you were asleep on the job, or people can say: ‘There are only two choices here, asleep on the job or corrupt.’ Which is it?”
“I know nothing, Jon Snow.” The World Anti-Doping Agency have not come out of this with their reputation intact. They admitted they had been made aware of the extortion of athletes to cover up doping cases in April last year, but had failed to act until German broadcaster ARD and the Sunday Times of London had revealed how deep the corruption ran at the end of 2014. Wada president, Craig Reedie, had sent the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, an email in April of this year in which he praised him for what he was doing to fight doping and said, according to the New York Times, “there was ‘no intention in Wada to do anything to affect’ their relationship”.
Reedie said he did not regret the e-mail, but was only annoyed it had been leaked. He also said he had not been told about Andrey Baranov, the Russian sports agent, who was the whistleblower who had approached Wada in April 2014, and was not worried it had not been brought to his attention. “I don’t micromanage” the staff, he said.
He saw nothing, was told nothing and his staff, the keepers of the torch for anti-doping, told him nothing. I know nothing, Jon Snow. It’s the new refrain of those who should have known better.