It is a quote attributed to Burke, "though not actually found in his writings," but "I think most people" understand the sentiment: “It is necessary only for good men to do nothing for evil to triumph,” according to IAAF President Sebastian Coe, writing in the London TELEGRAPH. But in "any variant, at the end of last week, it is an observation that stabs between the ribs," and something that "I have thought about restlessly and incessantly over the past awful week for athletics." Four months ago, and a handful of weeks before the elections in Beijing for the IAAF presidency, "I sat late one night with the wife of a colleague in the hotel at one of our area championships." The lobbying for votes at all levels of our sport in advance of the election "was all around us -- and some of it unedifying." She turned to me and asked a "penetrating question and it was asked with more than a tinge" of sadness. “How did we get to this?” At the end of a week that began with a "shocking report into anti-doping violations and finished with the suspension of one of our biggest athletics federations," this, too, "is a question with which I am wrestling." On Friday night, "at the end of a three‑hour conference call, my council colleagues voted almost unanimously to provisionally suspend Russia." The atmosphere was a "suffusion of sadness and anger." The recognition that "unless we fully grasp the enormity of our plight, there were unlikely to be many tomorrows for athletics." Nor did we "kid ourselves that this was just a rogue or isolated case in one country." Last week, in a "lengthy charge list," I was criticized for suggesting that "most seemingly intractable problems are best addressed through dialogue and engagement and not through isolation." It is "an instinct to which I will always adhere." And when asked in the past and recently about banning federations and even with a caveat of "never say never," the "shocking scale of the report's findings left my colleagues, doves and hawks alike, with no other choice to make." The road to change "may be quicker than some think but the journey to rebuilding trust will outlast my mandate as president." The decisions and actions we take "have to be without partial affection or self-interest." And there is "another principle to which I am wedded and not ashamed to espouse right now." If this is "not about creating opportunities for clean athletes to showcase their God-given talents, then it is about nothing else" (TELEGRAPH, 11/14).
