Lord Coe, the man who led the delivery of arguably the greatest British sporting occasion of this or any other decade, hopes sport can be “a powerful vehicle for change” in the 2020s.
Coe led the team which bid to host the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and then served as chairman on the organising committee.
Just over a week before the Games burst into life on Super Saturday, Coe addressed the nation and the watching world at the opening ceremony.
Team GB won six gold medals on that unforgettable summer’s day, with three coming within 44 minutes in front of 80,000 people at the Olympic Stadium track as Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford all triumphed.
“My Super Saturday started at the sailing down in Weymouth,” Coe recalled.
“Jacques Rogge, the (IOC) president, wanted to go down and see his all-time hero Ben Ainslie, and so I accompanied him down but I politely declined going out onto the water for four or five hours, and sat in the little control room at the sailing centre and watched the opening morning of athletics.
“The fact that we had a completely full stadium was something that just blew me away. Just the relief of seeing everybody at nine o’clock in the morning, in that stadium, 80,000 people, was huge. I was so proud.
“To have got Jess, Mo and Greg in the same window was extraordinary. It was one of those moments – where were you when it happened?
“For a few of us I know we feel very privileged to say we were in that stadium.”
