by Our Sports Desk

SEBASTIAN Coe will discover tomorrow if he has been entrusted with the top job in athletics — and at one of the most crucial times in the sport’s history.

Coe is running against Sergey Bubka, the Ukrainian pole vault great, for the presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the sport’s world governing body, with the election taking place at the IAAF Congress in Beijing ahead of the start of the World Championships.

The 58-year-old, like Bubka an IAAF vice-president, is seen as the favourite to succeed Lamine Diack — and take on the challenge of repairing the standing of a sport whose very credibility is under threat because of repeated drug scandals.

Allegations of doping on a mass scale and cover-ups at the very top of the sport threaten to destroy its already fragile reputation.

The 214 IAAF member federations will vote to decide who will take over from Diack, the 82-year-old from Senegal, who has been president since 1999.

The mood in Coe’s camp is positive, although there is a determination not to let up and to keep the momentum going all the way to election day.

Coe, who is also chairman of the British Olympic Association, is well out in front in terms of public declarations of support.

He has travelled around 700,000 kilometres across the globe during the campaign in his bid to garner support and the strength and range of the public endorsements, which have come from federations in Europe, North America, the Caribbean and Africa, are significant but by no means a guarantee of success.

Both Coe and Bubka have highlighted the need to overhaul the athletics calendar, introducing more “street meets,” increase commercial revenue, empower national federations and encourage young people into the sport.

But it is the fight against banned drugs which will be front and centre of the new president’s reign.

The former London 2012 chairman said in his manifesto: “The fight against those who continue to lie and cheat is not over — far from it — and it is crucial that we continue to increase resources in this battle for our sport’s integrity and now is the time to dramatically close the gap between a positive test and the relevant sanction.”

Bubka said in his: “Doping is a major threat to the sport we all love and we must fight this battle head-on to ensure our sport has a clean future.”