Why are the Metropolitan Police not feeling Tory Lord Sebastian Coe’s collar and trawling his hard drives? I blogged recently about his involvement in awarding the World Athletics Championships without a vote to the hometown of his long term paymasters and sponsors, Nike. Plus the £12 million his promotions company made from VIP hospitality packages for the Olympics, the VIP tickets for which were allocated by the Organising Committee of which he was the £600,000 pa chairman.

Now we have this, from the person Coe works closest with in the IAAF and who he has now promoted to head the President’s office since Coe assumed that title:

« Dear Papa,

Following our discussion earlier I have already had some thoughts and believe that we need to do the following, in the strict confidence and control within a small circle of senior IAAF staff only. This must be very secret.
(…)

4. Finally, as soon as possible, and ‘unofficially’ PR campaign to ensure that we avoid international media scandals related to the Moscow Championships especially in the British press, where the worst of the articles is coming from. This will require specialist PR skills (working only with me directly) from London, but I believe that if we consider using CSM we can also benefit from Seb’s political influence in the UK. It is in his personal interest to ensure that the Moscow World Champs is a success and that people do not think that the media of his own country are trying to destroy it. We can work extremely hard in stopping any planed ‘attack’ on Russia from the British press in the coming weeks.

5. Finally, I need to be able to sit down with the Anti-doping department and understand exactly what Russian ‘skeleton’ we have still in the cupboard regarding doping. I think that the time to have unveiled the various athletes was a long time ago and that now we need to be smart. These athletes, of course, should NOT be part of any Russian team for these World Championships and Valentin should be pressurised to make sure this is the case. If the guilty ones are not competing then we might as well wait until the event is over to announce them. Or we announce one or two BUT AT THE SAME TIME as athletes from other countries. Also we can prepare a special dossier on IAAF testing which will show that one of the reasons why these Russian athletes come up positive is that they get tested a lot !!! In the same way, we can make the point that the WADA laboratory is the responsibility of WADA not IAAF and that if WADA decides there really is a problem, we have a plan B to do the tests in Lausanne instead (Gabriel confirmed this to me yesterday).

Papa, as soon as I have an idea of the price of this unofficial PR campaign I will let you know, but I will do everything in my power to protect the IAAF and the President.

All the best Nick »

So what does the Establishment now wish us to believe?

a) As long-term Vice President of the IAAF, Coe had no idea the organisation was massively corrupt and the President was taking huge bribes to cover-up doping scandals.
b) Coe had no idea his close associate and now head of his office Nick Davies was writing to the son of the President proposing that Coe’s company and Coe’s “political influence” be used to keep doping scandals out of the British media.
c) Coe’s meeting, while Vice President of the IAAF, with executives of his sponsor Nike, to discuss awarding the World Athletics Championships to Eugene, had no bearing at all on the decision of the President of IAAF to award the games to Eugene without a vote.

All that is even less convincing than Sepp Blatter’s declarations of innocence. Yet there is an utter difference in the British media’s treatment of Blatter and of “Lord” Coe.

I wonder why?