Coe looks back on an extraordinary career, his world records, a ‘run for cash’ controversy and his rivalry with Steve Ovett
Forty years ago this week, on a chaotic June night in Florence, Sebastian Coe set an 800m world record so breathtakingly supreme it stood for 16 years. His time, 1:41:73, remains instant shorthand for English sporting excellence, alongside 1966, 364 and 3:59:4 in the pantheon. Even now, in the era of super spikes and slick-fast tracks, only two men have gone quicker. “I didn’t want to just nibble at world records,” he tells the Guardian, as his mind whirls back to that rumbustious night at the Stadio Comunale. “I wanted to take chunks out of them.”
He was as good as his word. By the time Coe put away his spikes for the 1981 season he had shattered five world records in six months, won all 22 of his races on the track, and recorded one of the great invincible seasons in athletics history. “It was an odd feeling,” he says. “I was in such a purple patch that I went to the line knowing I was not going to lose. And my opponents knew they were not going to win.”