SEBASTIAN COE was elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) yesterday after beating Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka by 115 votes to 92 in a ballot of the governing body’s 50th Congress.

    The 58-year-old Coe replaces 82-year-old Lamine Diack of Senegal, who stood down after 16 years.

    Coe, a two-time Olympic 1,500-meter gold medalist, former Conservative Party lawmaker in Britain and chairman of the London 2012 bid and organizing committee, reportedly traveled 700,000 kilometers during the campaign.

    Ukraine pole vault great Bubka, a former Olympic and world championship gold medalist and long-time world-record holder, retained his position as a vice president in a subsequent poll.

    The IAAF election, held in the leadup to the world championships, which start Saturday in Beijing, has been overshadowed by intense criticism of the world body following media reports that it has failed to act on evidence of widespread blood doping.

    German broadcaster ARD and Britain’s The Sunday Times newspaper citied leaked test results from a 2011 study in an IAAF database and asserted that blood doping was rampant in the sport.

    The IAAF last week denied it had tried to block publication of the study, and confirmed that 28 athletes had been caught in retests of their doping samples from the 2005 and 2007 world championships but said none of the athletes will be competing in this year’s competition.

    Coe has proposed a fully independent anti-doping tribunal to deal with the issues.(SD-Agencies)