The story of Sebastian Coe

At the end of last month, I attended the launch of a story telling service, which has been brought over from the US and is aimed at conference planners looking for inspirational keynotes. 

The master storyteller for the UK division of Mark of a Leader is Tom Griffin, a former director of events agency Sledge. 

The evening consisted of a few sample stories, including how Roger Bannister achieved his 4-minute mile and how the same 12 notes of music have been used to inspire some of the greatest musicians throughout history. 

But this is an Olympic year for London so I thought I'd re-tell Tom's tale of a fearless leader who also just happens to be Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, and a former gold medalist himself.

He was the reason for my interest in the Olympics and his great rivalry with Steve Ovett will forever be associated with 800-metre and 1500-metre running. He is, of course, Sebastian Coe.

Seb Coe was born in London but grew up in Sheffield, where his father worked in the steel industry and his mother was an actress.

Although he had always been an active child, it was at a school assembly at the age of 12 that Sebastian first became inspired about the Olympics.

On the screen he and his schoolmates saw grainy pictures of two athletes from their home town who were competing in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He was gripped by the drama of the competition, and the possibilities it represented. By the time he got back to his classroom, Coe says, he knew what he wanted to do - and what he wanted to be.

With his father Peter acting as his dedicated trainer, over the next decade he steadily advanced into the upper echelon of the world’s runners. The intense competition for records between Coe and his greatest rival, runner Steve Ovett, gripped the British imagination… and kept the fans watching.

In 1979, in the space of only 41 days Coe set three world records (800m, mile, and 1500m) – the first person to hold all three records at the same time.

At the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, he took home the gold medals in two events (800 and 1500m).

Four years later in Los Angeles, he won silver in the 800m, and a second gold in the 1500m… making him the first athlete to win gold medals for the same event in two successive Olympics.

My father, who was perhaps the most inspiring figure in my life, gave all of his children (and all four of us have done very well) the best advice at every stage of our lives and our development that any parent can give.

Basically, his message was this: “… You don’t really have to do it any way other than the way you want to do it; but just do it — and do it with passion.” - Sebastian Coe

But despite his many successes, during his athletic career Coe had been plagued by a number of health issues, such as back problems and toxoplasmosis – a chest infection he had picked up during training in Italy. On a number of occasions he was unable to compete; his health almost prevented him from going to the 1984 Olympics, and was a factor in his not being chosen for the British team at the 1988 games in South Korea.

By the late 1980’s, Coe knew that his days as a competitive athlete were behind him. His innate clarity of vision meant that he had done a lot of planning over the years, and he had no shortage of other skills to offer.

In 1992 he won election with the Conservative Party as a Member of Parliament…a post he held until the 1997 General Election. In 2000 his previous achievements and potential for future great achievements was recognised when he was invited to become a member of the House of Lords. Over the same period, he leveraged his public image to generate business success, opening a chain of health clubs, which now has 20,000 members.

By 2003 his tirelessness and tenacious ambition was preparing him for what is generally considered to be one of the most complex and demanding feats of leadership and organisation in the modern age. A challenge that has to combine the sometimes conflicting needs of the worlds greatest athletes, the worlds most successful brands, geo-political imperatives and effectively taking control of the infrastructure of one of the worlds greatest cities. With billions of viewers right across the globe it was also a challenge that, if won, would go on to be delivered in the glare of the most intense media spotlight.

At that time in 2003 the City of London was midway through the complex and expensive process of bidding to be the host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. From the beginning, Seb Coe was an immediate, familiar and enthusiastic ambassador for the plan.

Then in May 2004, the person who had put together the original concept and the bid team suddenly resigned. Coe accepted the role of chairman.

Five cities had been selected as finalists by the IOC at that point. Paris was considered to be the strongest. London’s plan had been criticised in two major areas: there were too many events taking place outside Greater London, and the city’s aging, overcrowded transportation system had to be addressed.

Over the next year, the bid team worked tirelessly to find solutions to every issue. Coe himself worked in close partnership with Ken Livingstone, the then Mayor of London, despite the fact that they were from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Venues were changed, event schedules rewritten, bylaws revised, alliances forged, and budgets approved. 

With Lord Coe on board, quite literally nothing was allowed to deflect the focus, no obstacle was considered too big and no challenge too complex.

Within a year, the bid had evolved to include a high-speed shuttle service to the Olympic park, as well as substantial upgrades to London’s existing transportation systems such as the Tube.

It was also driven by a new sense of purpose that was to prove to be a pivitol point for the ambitions of the bid; using the Olympics and Paralympics to build a legacy for the future. 

This legacy focussed on the youth and included new sports facilities throughout the city… as well the Olympic Medical Institute, a sports rehabilitation centre, and the largest urban park developed in Europe for more than 150 years. 

It also reached out beyond sport in to society as whole with what has become dubbed the ‘Cultural Olympiad’ and since which has already involved over 16 million participants since it began in 2008.

“I believed that we had to answer the question: Why are we doing this? And it wasn’t until we started to articulate, internally as an organisation, that it was about using the Games to inspire young people to participate in sports that we each understood what we had to do.” - Sebastian Coe

But even with these improvements, a win was far from certain as the IOC met for the final judging on July 5, 2005, in Singapore.

What turned the tide, according to most observers, was the stirring final presentation by Sebastian Coe. 

According to a BBC correspondent: "His final speech was fantastic. It was statesmanlike. It was just a stunning performance."

He focused his remarks around youth and his own commitment to the Olympic ideal. He spoke of attending that school assembly when he was 12, and how much it had inspired him in choosing his path through life.

And his words hit home with the IOC judges. When they announced their decision later that evening, the winning city was London.

As with the greatest of achievements, winning the opportunity is just the beginning, the hardest part is turning the vision into a reality and it requires a whole new set of leadership skills.

In the seven years since then, as Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG), Coe has been instrumental in turning London’s dream into a reality.

New venues and infrastructure have been built…a legacy for the future. The transportation system has been upgraded. Tickets have been sold around the world, and the Olympic torch has begun to wend its way around the country, heading for the opening ceremonies at the end of July.

The race is on. Through it all, Sebastian Coe continues to be what he has always been: a man in motion. And clearly, a leader of great purpose, tenacity and vision.

London Pleasure Gardens transforms docklands wasteland into arts and culture oasis

An ambitious project to convert a 20-acre stretch of east London wasteland into a 35,000 capacity arts and culture destination will be completed on 30 June.

The London Pleasure Gardens, located at Pontoon Dock, will feature a 27,000 capacity open-air space for live concerts, a 2,800 capacity sound proofed indoor space with late license, a floating cocktail lounge with a 24-hour licence, large-scale sculpture gardens and a dome building with an events capacity for 1,000.

Events already confirmed for the site include, UK electronic music festival Bloc, featuring Snoop Dogg and Orbital on 6 and 7 July, plus the Africa stage for BT’s River of Music, taking place over the weekend before the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

Part of the London 2012 Festival, the BT River of Music will feature performances by musicians representing all the Olympic and Paralympic nations.

Musicians from the world’s major continents will be represented across six stages: Battersea Park (Asia stage); Trafalgar Square (Europe stage); Somerset House (Europe stage); Tower of London (Americas stage); Greenwich Old Royal Naval College (Oceania stage) and London Pleasure Gardens (Africa stage).

During the Olympic Games, the London Pleasure Gardens will provide a waterfront location for live art, film screenings, promenade performances and community projects.

On 30 July, a pyrotechnic show will animate the concrete architecture that surrounds the site.

The show will be inspired by a traumatic event that happened on the site in 1917, when a TNT factory exploded, tragically killing 73 people and filling the sky with burning grain. The performance will fuse music, pyrotechnics, projection and theatre.

Between the 17th and 19th Centuries in Britain, Pleasure Gardens were communal spaces where people from all walks of life, converged to listen to music, admire paintings, stroll, drink and immerse themselves in the culture that made their city great.

The most famous Pleasure Gardens were in Vauxhall. Mozart played there aged nine and Charles Dickens wrote about them. Between 1851 and 1884, the Royal Docks had its very own Pleasure Gardens, named The Royal Victoria Gardens.

The modern day scheme is supported by Newham Council, the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency to kick-start regeneration initiatives planned for the Royal Docks in the London borough of Newham.

As winners of a Mayoral competition to find ‘Meanwhile’ uses for prominent brownfield sites in the Olympic borough, the team behind the Pleasure Gardens will stage events, concerts and cultural collaborations on the site until 2014.

The London Pleasure Gardens team includes Debs Armstrong, who is the Creative Director and Co-producer of the Shangri-La area at Glastonbury Festival, and was also the co-Founder and Producer of The Lost Vagueness area which preceded it, as well as the designer of bespoke events and live music tours by bands such as Groove Armada, and Ed Harcourt.

Also involved are Robin Collings who organised Stoke Newington Festival and Bassline Circus at Glastonbury, and Garfield Hackett who produced Mutate Britain, and Cordy House.

London wins bid to host 2017 Athletics World Championships

London has been chosen as the host city for the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The International Association of Athletics Federations selected London ahead of Doha at a bid presentation in Monaco by 16 votes to 10, earlier today (Friday 11 November).

It will be the first time that the World Athletics Championships are to be held in the UK and marks the first major tournament confirmed for the Olympic Stadium post London 2012.

Speaking from Monaco, The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: "Despite an excellent challenge from Doha, the London team put together a cracking bid which has paid off. With the 2017 championships now in the diary, next summer’s London Games is just the start of a long and active life for our magnificent stadium."

Over the last decade, London has transformed itself to become recognised globally as a leading city for major sporting events. Other successful bids for major sporting events post 2012 include the 2013 UEFA Champions League Final, the 2013 ITU World Championship Series Triathlon Grand Final and the 2015 Canoe Slalom World Championships.

Based on the success of London 2012’s International Inspiration Project, London 2017 has revealed the international legacy programme that will now be launched following the city's successful bid to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships. 

LEAP 2017 has been designed to engage two million children in athletics across 17 developing countries over four years.

A huge congratulations to everyone involved with the successful London 2017 bid.

Salmon smokery opens with event space overlooking Olympic stadium

One of the first signs of a 2012 legacy was official opened today by London Mayor Boris Johnson. H.Forman & Son's salmon smokery relocated to Fish Island in the Lea Valley after a compulsory purchase order, served by Boris's predecessor, forced it from its original site to make way for the Olympic stadium.

Following a four-year battle over land, H. Forman & Son's impressive new home now overlooks the development of the Olympic Stadium from the other side of the River Lea.

The multi-purpose factory will carry on the traditions of the 4th generation family owned salmon smoker, established in the East End in 1905. But it has now added an on-site restaurant and two event spaces with capacity for 200 and 600 respectively.

After my visit this morning to hear Boris's unveiling speech (embedded below) and to sample the smoked salmon delicacies on offer, I can testify that the new home of H.Forman & Son has unbeatable ringside views of the Olympic park. Excuse the pun, but it's a great leap forward for the regeneration of the East End and the first stage of what event organisers can expect from unique and unusual venues in the area. Former Mask managing director Arthur Somerset is handling event enquiries.

Look back at 2007Le Tour de France comes to London

When people question London’s ability to stage a successful Olympics in 2012, one date will now form the case for the defence and send the doubters on their bikes. On 7 July 2007, two years to the day since the terrorist atrocities on the capital’s transport system, around three million people from all over the world swarmed into the city for a weekend of events that included the Live Earth concert, the Wimbledon tennis finals and the Tower of London Music Festival. At its epicentre was the world’s biggest annual sporting event and without a doubt the biggest sporting test for the capital in advance of 2012.

Staging the Tour de France’s Grand Départ cost in the region of £6.8m, with the Mayor predicting a return on that investment of around £115m in additional tourism. It comprised a 7.9km prologue time trial that took place around Westminster, Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace on the Saturday and determined the first wearer of the race leader’s yellow jersey. The following day, the 189 cyclists departed for the first stage proper – a 126-mile route through Greenwich and into Kent.

Opening ceremony
Before each stage the tour ‘caravan’ (200 sponsors’ vehicles dispensing free gifts) drove the length of each route. Hyde Park was transformed into a ‘people’s village’ – a free event with interactive cycling displays – and every day a bicycle ballet took place outside the National Theatre. At Excel London in docklands, around 2,500 press and media registered at a hi-tech 8,000sqm media centre and in Trafalgar Square, an opening ceremony kicked off the extravaganza on 6 July.
Transport for London (TfL), the Mayor of London and the London Development Agency had been planning this weekend for four years. In August 2006, following a tender involving around 100 companies, TfL engaged agency Innovision to help turn its plans into reality. The team was lead by managing director Will Glendinning, who helped to plan the event meticulously with TfL, ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation, the Tour’s owners), the Metropolitan Police, Westminster Council, the Royal Parks, the Greater London Authority, Kent County Council, Canterbury City Council and more than 250 other stakeholders for more than a year.
Glendinning says: “From the outset, I was confident we had the talent and experience in our team to deliver a truly memorable event. However, I really wanted the event to recapture the public’s excitement and imagination of what a unique location London is and the potential available in the city. To stage an event of this scale, all our contractors needed to realise how much discussion and paperwork would be involved and logistically we pulled off one of the biggest road closure schemes London has seen for a long while.”
Substantial road closures and diversions to bus routes enabled 6,000 staff, crew and personnel to build the route infrastructure, which included 19 big screen viewing areas. At Excel London the world’s media were gathering and the cycling teams were milling around the surrounding hotels.
Excel’s services director Steve Melrose helped to oversee a five-day build of the media centre that comprised around 500 work stations, 100 analogue phone lines, two 8Mb broadband connections, 20 ISDN lines and three press conference rooms that around 500 media people a day passed through during the weekend. He says: “As a venue we’re used to dealing with international show requirements so it wasn’t a problem. At first, however, we were dealing with BT as our telecommunication provider, but very late in the day it changed and we had to deal direct with France Telecom. That was really the only slight issue we had to react to and quickly.”

Security plan
TfL had even bigger concerns. As a key player in bringing the Tour to the capital, it had cancelled engineering work on the Tube in central London and provided an extra 11,000 parking spaces for bikes. But it was the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on London and a week earlier a car bombing had been foiled near Piccadilly Circus. On the Central Line, a derailed underground train sat blocking Mile End’s westbound platform.
According to TfL’s head of special projects, Mick Hickford, the infrastructure was ready to cope with anything. “Regarding the Central Line derailment, we laid on additional bus services but in fact the line was reopened by Saturday morning,” he says. “An additional security plan for London’s transport was put in place but the area that held the prologue is the most secure in the country anyhow as the cyclists were passing the House of Commons, Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street. London’s public transport moves on average more than one million people a day so we were confident it would withstand all the activity in London, but it was extremely good practice for 2012 and we have learnt a huge amount.”

Well-wishers
Throughout the planning of the Grand Départ, Innovision was contracted by TfL to coordinate and deliver the creative and technical aspects of the event while TfL oversaw the planning, marketing and PR aspects. Hickford admits that part of the marketing campaign was an attempt to prolong European visits while also promoting the benefits of cycling. “I think two million people in central London over the weekend, plus huge public interest, has shown there is a great audience for cycling in London,” he says. “And I’m sure that such a great weekend for both sport and music ensured that visitors either stayed longer or left with a fantastic impression of London’s ability to host major events.”
On Sunday 8 July, 21 teams of nine riders left the Mall at 10.25am, crossed bridges and paraded past the London Eye and St Paul’s Cathedral before heading for Greenwich via Tower Bridge. The race officially started opposite the Maritime Museum at 11am as the cyclists set off for Canterbury. From there, well-wishers and doping scandals followed them through Belgium and Spain.
After 21 stages and 2,206 miles, the world’s most gruelling sporting challenge reached its climax in Paris on 29 July – but whatever impressions it left overall, there’s no doubt that London’s handling of the opening days was a triumph that will stay in people’s memories for at least the next five years.