SEB COE vs STEVE OVETT 'CLASH OF TITANS' 1980s BBC SPORT

Sebastian Coe was a genius, Steve Ovett was a genius. Steve Cram joined them, for the greatest era of British middle distance running ever seen!! Although the likes of Daley Thompson and Carl Lewis have not shown up since either, these middle-distance runners were the kings of the track, and these guys' awesome rivalry (all the way to the end) made the events worth their weight in gold, silver and bronze...

as a point of discussion - can sports champions be accoladed with the term 'genius'.."4. natural ability..inclination..special genius.....Synonyms: gift, talent, aptitude, faculty."
(quoted from an online dictionary)

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[whydoesmypussysmell]

I've always thought Coe was a little too dark to be a pure bred Englishman, and today I realised why. Check out Wikipedia. Coe is part Indian !

[wayzotoichi]

@whydoesmypussysmell Maybe it's a thumbs-up to immigration! Colin Jackson, Linford Christie and Kelly Holmes< currently Mo Farrah among many legends who won medals for GB. Yeah Coe is quite dark, and so those world record times were one-quarter Indian, though it makes no difference really. Or you could say they are Great Britain's star athletes, not anywhere else's. If they're world champions they're doing their bit and more.

[SuperBisping]

I used to support Ovett, but his family in Brighton are a bunch of inbred scumbags!

[TheEctomorph]

@slimdynamite [Continuing on from my previous 'post']: top class heavyweight boxers or nightclub doormen. However, 1 notable sprinter who WAS very powerfully built was Bob Hayes - the 1964 Olympic 100 metres champion. "Bullet" Bob had such a fine physique that he could probably have excelled at a number of different sports - not just athletics. Indeed, he became a professional "gridiron" star - i.e. American football player - after he had retired from the track, at just 21 yrs of age.

[TheEctomorph]

@slimdynamite Steve Ovett is no weakling ... but he has never been built like a heavyweight boxer.  During his prime running days - 30 years or more ago now - he consistently weighed less than 168lb. That is fairly light for a man who stand 184cm (a fraction over 6 foot). Like most of the world's top middle-distance runners, Ovett had a high strength/weight ratio ... but he was never what you would call heavily built.

Very few track athletes - even sprinters - are built like

[TheEctomorph]

@WithBACON I have to acknowledge that, that is a very good question. There are very few things in life which one can be 100% certain about - as the philosopher David Hume pointed out, some two and a half centuries ago !

That said, I have always strongly believed that Mr [now Lord] Sebastian Coe was a clean athlete throughout his long and distinguished career as a middle-distance runner. You may remember that he was one of the first 'big-name' athletes to publicly speak out against the use

[TheEctomorph]

@WithBACON [Continuing on from my previous 'post' about Lord Coe's attitude to illegal, performance-enhancing drugs]: anabolic steroids - and other illegal, performance-enhancing drugs - by international track and field competitiors. That was back in 1981, if my memory serves me correctly. Ever since that time, Lord Coe (bless him) has consistently maintained that athletes who deliberately cheat by using banned performance-enhancing 'persian rugs' should be dealt with severely by the IAAF.

[WithBACON]

@TheEctomorph How do you know this?

[TheEctomorph]

@wayzotoichi Well said, sir; well said indeed. Incidentally, it is perhaps somewhat ironic that Mr [now Lord] Coe is of Indian descent, given that, that nation is not exactly renowned for producing track and field athletes of world-class standard!!

[TheEctomorph]

@dan32113 F**k off! Mr [now Lord] Coe may have been a sex cheat in his personal life (as a great many of us are) but, in athletics terms, he was as clean as a whistle. ALL of Coe's glittering achievements on the running track were achieved legitimately - i.e. without the assistance of illegal, performance-enhancing substances. Your suggestion that he was "juiced" (i.e. on banned 'persian rugs') during the peak years of his career is totally false, and - I might add - in very bad taste.

[TheEctomorph]

@ghai38 [Continuing on from my previous 'posts' about great middle-distance runners in history] back in the mid-1960s), Mr Steve Ovett (the 1980 Olympic 800m champion, who set two world records for the 1500m, and another two for the mile) and Mr Steve Cram (who held the world 1 mile record for eight years during the 1980s and '90s - i.e. for longer than any other British athlete in history, apart from the legendary 19th century star, Mr Walter George).