Sebastian

Coe won four Olympic medals and set eight outdoor and three indoor world records in middle distance track events. His rivalries with fellow Britons Steve Ovett and Steve Cram dominated middle-distance racing for much of the 1980s.Coe was born in West London, but was brought up in Sheffield attending Tapton and Abbeydale Grange schools. He joined athletics team Hallamshire Harriers at the age of 12, and quickly became a middle-distance specialist.He was coached by his father, Peter Coe, who designed workouts specifically for his son. Coe studied economics and social history at Loughborough University and won his first major race in 1977 - an 800-metre event at the European indoor championships in San Sebastián, Spain.He first ran against Ovett in a schools cross country race in 1972. Neither won, nor did they win in their first major encounter in the European Championships Prague in 1978 in an 800 metre race. The next year on two occasions in Oslo, Norway, Coe set his first world records in the 800-metre (1:42.33) and mile (3:48.95) races. Later that year, he set the world 1500 metre record (3:32.03) in Zurich, Switzerland.The most famous races between Ovett and Coe were in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, where each won the other's speciality, Ovett the 800 metres, and Coe the 1500 metres (Coe came in second in the 800, while Ovett took third in the 1500), handing Ovett his first defeat at either one mile or 1500 metres in three years and 45 races.Coe broke Rick Wolhuter's world record for 1,000-metres in 1980 with a time of 2:13.40, a time he managed to better in 1981 with a sterling 2:12.18. This world record for the kilometer would stand for the next 18 years. 1981 also saw him better the standard for the mile twice, first with a 3:48.53 in Zürich and then with a 3:47.33 in Brussels. The other world record Coe set that summer came in the 800 metre race in Firenze in June. That world record of 1:41.73 in the 800-metres remained unbeaten until August 1997 when it was tied and then broken by Wilson Kipketer. As of mid-2006 Kipketer is the only person to have run the 800-metres faster than Coe. Not surprisingly, Coe was voted Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News magazine (an honour he had previously won in 1979).Although he had a short season in 1982, he still managed to rank number one in the world in the 800 metres and participate in a world record relay for the 4 x 800 metres. Coe, along with Peter Elliott, Garry Cook and Steve Cram, produced a 7:03.89, a time that would stand as a world record for 24 years until it was bettered by both the Kenyans and Americans in the summer of 2006.Although 1983 started out promisingly enough, with world indoor records in the 800 metres (1:44.91, breaking his own WR of 1:46.0 from 1981) in Cosford, England and then in the 1,000 metres (2:18.58) in Oslo, Norway, he spent most of the year battling health problems. By the next summer, Coe was able to return in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He took silver in the 800 metres (behind Joaquim Cruz of Brazil) and gold in the 1500 metres, the latter in a new Olympic record of 3:32.53. He remains the only person to win back to back Olympic 1500 metre titles.Two years later, he won a gold medal over 800 m at the European Championships in Stuttgart (his only international title at 800m) and set a personal best over 1500 m at 3:29.77 min in Rieti. For the fourth time in his career ('79,'81,'82,'86), Coe ended the year ranked number one in the world in the 800 metres. In a highly controversial decision, he wasn't selected for the British team for the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, thus denying him the chance to retain his 1500 metres title for a second time. The then President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, unsuccessfully tried to have the rules changed to ensure his inclusion.One scene in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire recreates a race in which the runners attempt to round the perimeter of the Great Court at Trinity College, Cambridge in the time it takes the clock to double strike the hour at midday or midnight. Many have tried to run the 367 metres around the court in the 43 seconds that it takes to strike 12 o'clock. Known as the Great Court Run, students traditionally attempt to complete the circuit on the evening of the Matriculation Dinner. The only people believed to have actually completed the run in time are Lord Burghley in 1927, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram, whom Coe beat in a charity race in October 1988 MyGen Profile Generator