Sebastian Coe Quotes

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Sebastian Coe

Profession : Politician

Birth : September 29, 1956

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

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

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 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

Marathons don't come to you overnight.

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

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

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

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

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

Sebastian Coe

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

Sebastian Coe

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Sebastian Coe

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.

Sebastian Coe