Sebastian Coe Quotes & Sayings

When I moved to Sheffield and went to a secondary modern in the Seventies, there were certain challenges: if you've got a name like Sebastian, you either learn to fight or to run. — Sebastian Coe

The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen. — Sebastian Coe

During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year. — Sebastian Coe

My motivation to compete was always about improving one year to the next. At 34, I realised I'd never run any quicker, so why hang on? But I love running and still run along woodland trails and beaches every few days. — Sebastian Coe

I started daily training at the age of 14. When I was 16 years old, I was running twice a day. — Sebastian Coe

Sport is a universal language, building more bridges between people than anything else I can think of. — Sebastian Coe

The great thing about athletics is that it's like poker sometimes: you know what's in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the front. — Sebastian Coe

Our success in Singapore was a Herculean effort by the whole team. Now I am determined to deliver on all we promised. I will be watching like a hawk. — Sebastian Coe

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young. — Sebastian Coe

My mother was Indian, brought up in Delhi. My grandparents were born in Bow and Poplar. — Sebastian Coe

Nobody ever becomes an expert parent. But I think good parenting is about consistency. It's about being there at big moments, but it's also just the consistency of decision making. And it's routine. — Sebastian Coe

You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don't want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside. — Sebastian Coe

The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation. — Sebastian Coe

I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life. — Sebastian Coe

I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games. — Sebastian Coe

I started track and field when I was 12 and didn't get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that's a very long apprenticeship. — Sebastian Coe

To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable. — Sebastian Coe

I'm not sure there are enough coaches in the system that can take young talent and consistently get them into the top five in the world. — Sebastian Coe

The London Games will be designed for the athletes and we will provide them with the very best venues and the very best conditions to pursue their sporting dreams in London. — Sebastian Coe

All pressure is self-inflicted. It's what you make of it or how you let it rub off on you. — Sebastian Coe

If you lived in Sheffield and were called Sebastian, you had to learn to run fast at a very early stage. — Sebastian Coe

There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing. — Sebastian Coe

Tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle! — Sebastian Coe

It is to create the best Games the world has ever seen by unlocking the UK's unrivalled passion for sport, by delivering the best Games for athletes to compete in, by showcasing London's unmatched cultural wealth and diversity and by creating a real and lasting legacy. — Sebastian Coe

I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition. — Sebastian Coe

I don't want to go back into politics - absolutely not. — Sebastian Coe

When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies. — Sebastian Coe

I might have to consider coaching- I'm getting too old to be a world class runner and my mind isn't gone enough to become an official. — Sebastian Coe

Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding. — Sebastian Coe

I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window. — Sebastian Coe

Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn't get beyond their relationship with their own parents. — Sebastian Coe

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

I can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday. — Sebastian Coe

I'm probably one of the few people who can say I did all three types of state sector schooling. — Sebastian Coe

I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure. — Sebastian Coe

I was ecstatic when we won - to host the Olympics is one of the biggest opportunities in living memory. It will help change the lives of young people and transform east London. — Sebastian Coe

Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic. — Sebastian Coe

Football was not what I was put on this planet to do. — Sebastian Coe

I became a great runner because if you're a kid in Leeds and your name is Sebastian you've got to become a great runner. — Sebastian Coe

Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing. — Sebastian Coe

Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi's legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before. — Sebastian Coe

Quite simply the Games are the biggest opportunity sport in this country has ever had. It is one that we must not squander. — Sebastian Coe

Competing is exciting and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way. — Sebastian Coe

The characteristic shared by people at the top of their profession is that, to get better, they crave criticism. Most people don't like criticism, but if you are trying to shave two tenths of a second at 800 metres, that is what you crave. — Sebastian Coe

It is really important that we promote competitive support in schools. It is very important that we recognise that has to be underpinned by good quality physical education and by getting people into patterns of exercise. — Sebastian Coe

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish. — Sebastian Coe

I think I'm probably just an old-fashioned Tory. I don't wake up each morning trying to figure out what kind of Conservative I am; for me it's quite instinctive. — Sebastian Coe

I'm a Chelsea season-ticket holder, and I've supported them for 37 years, so any judgment of Manchester United by me is seen as biased. — Sebastian Coe

I've always felt that long, slow distance produces long, slow runners. — Sebastian Coe

We have to recognise there are very few countries you will take the Games to where somebody doesn't have issues on foreign or domestic policy. — Sebastian Coe

World records are only borrowed. — Sebastian Coe

We need to be confident. We need not to blink. — Sebastian Coe

I've never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, 'Can you text this message to somebody.' I don't even have a computer on my desk. — Sebastian Coe

At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper. — Sebastian Coe

Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal. — Sebastian Coe

The nine inches right here; set it straight and you can beat anybody in the world. — Sebastian Coe

I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls. — Sebastian Coe

I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative. — Sebastian Coe

My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that. — Sebastian Coe

There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side. — Sebastian Coe

Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan. — Sebastian Coe

I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week. — Sebastian Coe

Marathons don't come to you overnight. — Sebastian Coe

I actually don't believe in big government, and half the time I'm never quite sure I believe in government, generally. — Sebastian Coe

The Americans sowed the seed, and now they have reaped the whirlwind — Sebastian Coe

Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through. — Sebastian Coe

There may be problems we still need to tease out, but we will leave no stone unturned in our bid to make London the host city. — Sebastian Coe

Inspirational leaders need to have a winning mentality in order to inspire respect. It is hard to trust in the leadership of someone who is half-hearted about their purpose, or only sporadic in focus or enthusiasm. — Sebastian Coe

My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track. — Sebastian Coe

Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something. — Sebastian Coe

I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent. — Sebastian Coe

The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race. — Sebastian Coe

In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn't much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport. — Sebastian Coe

Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully. — Sebastian Coe

I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions. — Sebastian Coe

I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing. — Sebastian Coe

In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it. — Sebastian Coe

Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing. — Sebastian Coe

This is not going to be business as usual. This is business unusual — Sebastian Coe