Imagine winning two Olympic gold medals and still not considering it the crowning achievement of your life.

That is how track and field legend Sebastian Coe, in Bermuda as the keynote speaker at the Chubb Bermuda Triangle this weekend, feels as he looks back on some of his biggest accomplishments.

Coe became a household name in Britain after winning gold in the 1,500 metres in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984, but his post-running career in politics and sports administration is what gives him the most pleasure.

After leaving the track, Coe became a Conservative MP, president of the Olympic Games organising committee for London 2012, president of World Athletics, and is now campaigning to be president of the International Olympic Committee, so there is little time for reflection.

“In my head, delivering the Olympics to London is far bigger than anything I did individually because it impacted more people,” Coe said.

“I cannot tell you I think about the gold medals on a daily basis or even a weekly basis but it is helpful in everything that I have gone on to do and I still tend to see the world through the eyes of an athlete.

“I like to think I put a few more people into the sport when I was competing, at least that is what I hope happened, but I always instinctively knew that it would be bigger if we could bring a Games back to London for the first time in 64 years.

“We built a new city inside an old city in seven years in a part of London I knew really well. My dad was born a few streets away from where we regenerated that desolate parcel of land, creating 50,000 full-time jobs and schools, hospitals, businesses, with three universities now based in the Olympic Park, venues that London did not have that are now world-class and there are 3,500 socially affordable houses.”

Coe is making his first visit to Bermuda and is here because of his friendship with Donna Raynor, who was elected to the World Athletics Council and chairs a number of committees.

“This is my first proper time in Bermuda,” Coe said. “I am very lucky because Donna joined the World Athletics Council back in 2023, although we have known each other for a number of years and she was very supportive and helped me in my campaign for the presidency of the sport back in 2015.

“We have always had a good working friendship and the reality is that I have thrown Donna some really tough committees that she chairs, and some of them are really quite sensitive committees.

“The quid pro quo is that I come to Bermuda to witness the Triangle Challenge. I would have been here a few years earlier because the Carifta Games were scheduled and, of course, Covid got in the way, but I am delighted to be here and honouring my debt to Donna.”

The Chubb Bermuda Triangle Expo was taking place at the time of this interview on Friday, with hundreds of runners from around the world itching to take photographs and get Coe’s signature. He greeted everyone warmly, but anybody hoping for a preview of what he might say in his keynote speech on Saturday night was sorely disappointed.

“I cannot give too much away because I have not figured out what I am going to say yet,” Coe said.

“I normally figure it out when I get to the lectern and sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

“I am just going to thank them for being who they are, for being part of an extraordinary movement, and talk a little about my career, but not heavy duty, just to really reflect on the extraordinary nature of our sport.

“One of the challenges we always have is that it is really important that the road running community is an important part of what we do and the strategy of World Athletics is to work strategically with events like this.

“Apart from the fact it is great to see more people running, there are some unquestioned health benefits and that is why I was delighted to briefly catch up with the Premier of Bermuda this morning because the message from World Athletics all the time is that we are probably the best economic policy, certainly the best health and education policy, and we play a role through our coaches and club structures in social cohesion.”

Coe remains a runner at heart and, despite his high-powered roles, still feels at home among the grass roots of the sport.

“I have been looking forward to this and the running community is a very special community,” Coe said.

“Athletics is a fabulous sport but there is an esprit de corps among the running community. I will make this point, and I certainly will as president of World Athletics, that more people run as a recreational physical activity than do any other sport in the world, so it is a really important asset.

“I came through New York to fly here yesterday and it was lovely to see so many excited people getting on that flight coming down as parents, grandparents, kids, all being part of a family weekend.”

Despite a CV brimming with high-profile roles, his biggest job may still be to come with Coe jetting to Bermuda during the end days of his campaign to become president of the IOC, with his presentation to IOC members taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, later this month before the election takes place in March.

The new president will be chosen by 100 members, with a 50-50 split between athletes who have competed at an Olympic Games and those who have not, which includes royalty, former prime ministers, and successful business people. Coe will need to employ the right mix of personal diplomacy and policy to win this race.

“It is inevitably a mixture of everything but my candidacy is a very simple concept,” Coe said.

“You have some extraordinarily talented people sitting in those chambers. You have Olympic athletes, coaches, some commercially incredibly successful people, you have educators, members of royal families, former presidents and prime ministers of countries, you have got cultural icons and filmmakers.

“It is an extraordinary group of people but are we, the IOC, getting the most out of them? I do not think so, so we need to find a structure through which their voices, and our voices, can be heard and acted upon.

“It is really about empowering individual federations, National Olympic Committees, our membership and our athletes. The challenges that lie ahead are significant, the opportunities are greater than the challenges but the way you address that will be working together, talking together and standing together.

“Whether it is as president of World Athletics, president of the British National Olympic Committee, or president of the organising committee in London, I have always placed the athletes absolutely at the centre because if you get it right for the athletes it all falls into place.”

Bermuda is one of the smaller NOCs among the Olympic nations but Coe is adamant that his record of levelling up will be brought with him to the IOC top job.

“We either move together or we do not,” Coe said.

“It is the same principle in World Athletics. When I became president, we created something called the Athlete Olympic Dividend and that was really to try to help level up the delta that was developing between our smaller federations and their ambitions to do more stuff, but really just the financial ability to do that.

“We looked at the landscape and decided we did not just want a handful of well-heeled highly populated, well-sponsored federations in a way controlling the whole sport. Our sport is not just about powerhouses and 105 countries have now won Olympic medals in our sport. There is no other sport that gets anywhere near that, and that matters to us.

“If I am elected, and I take nothing for granted, I will take the same concept as it is very important that small NOCs and small federations feel that we are all swimming in the same direction.”