An open letter from Michael Spinks, Managing Director of Essex Flour and Grain Co Ltd and life member of Enfield and Haringey Athletics Club

I am running a campaign to sabotage the bid by Sebastian Coe to become the next President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

It comes 14 years on from a previous campaign I ran, seeking justice for the victims of the London 2012 Olympic Games, after Lord Coe – as chair of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) – effectively damaged the prospects of my own long-standing family business, and that of so many other businesses who had the great misfortune to find themselves held hostage under the powers of LOCOG.

The IOC’s rules will have to be changed for Coe’s candidacy to succeed. I, for one, certainly hope that the existing rules are not changed and that Coe fails in his ambition. You might presume that the whole athletics family in the UK might be firmly behind him and wish him success, but I have personal reasons for wishing to sabotage his campaign.

I had joined Southgate Harriers in 1971 and was a very small cog in the middle-distance training group down at New River Sports Centre, a group which Coe joined in autumn 1983 at a low ebb. I trained alongside (admittedly, for the most part behind him) during the winter of 1983/84. I never totally left athletics and, in 1999, I financially supported and helped to instigate the merger that took place between Borough of Enfield Harriers and Haringey AC, to form Enfield and Haringey AC.

In 2024, I and others are disillusioned by the pitiful state of the New River track. A group of us are on the case. As everybody realises, Coe departed the scene some 30 plus years ago and has zero interest in looking back.

While being in close contact with Coe was not unwelcome in 1983/84, that was certainly not the case from 2008 to 2012, when I had the singular misfortune to clash with him as he threw his weight (not so much), his power (considerably greater), and public money (seemingly inexhaustible) against myself, my business, my 100 staff and, among others, the 50 businesses clustered around Hackney Wick who sought a judicial review of LOCOG’s activities.

I had a senior parliamentarian speak up for me in the House of Commons but Coe could not be arsed to lift even a little finger. I stood in the 2010 General Election as an independent candidate in the Hackney South and Shoreditch constituency, under a ‘Justice for Victims of the Olympics’ banner appealing to anybody remotely interested that local security – our prime concern – and transport issues surrounding the summer games could be the death of a business that had been going for 149 years at that time.

You already know of Coe’s ambition; I also reckon to know, from bitter experience, of Coe’s arrogance, brutality, cowardice and duplicity.

I trust the above explains why I, for one, hope that Coe knows the humiliation and mortification that he seemed to take so much pleasure in inflicting on me, and other innocents, back in the day.

– Michael Spinks

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