As a middle-distance runner , Coe won four Olympic medals, including metres gold medals at the Olympic Games in and He set nine outdoor and three indoor world records in middle-distance track events β including, in , setting three world records in the space of 41 days β and the world record he set in the metres in remained unbroken until Coe's rivalries with fellow Britons Steve Ovett and Steve Cram dominated middle-distance racing for much of the s.
Following Coe's retirement from athletics, he was a Conservative member of parliament from to for Falmouth and Camborne in Cornwall, and became a Life Peer on 16 May In , he was elected a vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations IAAF , and re-elected for another four-year term in In , Coe was appointed Pro-Chancellor of Loughborough University where he had been an undergraduate.
Subsequently, in , he was appointed as Chancellor. He is also a member of Loughborough University's governing body. He joined Hallamshire Harriers at the age of 12, and soon became a middle-distance specialist, having been inspired by David Jackson, a geography teacher at Tapton School who had been a cross-country runner. Coe was coached by his own father and represented Loughborough University and later Haringey AC, now Enfield and Haringey Athletic Club when not competing for his country.
At Loughborough University he met an athletics coach, George Gandy, who developed "revolutionary" conditioning exercises to improve Coe's running. His mother, Tina Angela Lal, died in London, in , aged He ran in the Emsley Carr mile on 29 August , outsprinting Filbert Bayi of Tanzania in the home straight and winning in Coe's season continued to show his progression in the middle distances, though he raced only sparingly, as in early June he had suffered a serious ankle injury whilst out on a training run.
On 18 August , he ran the m at the Ivo Van Damme Memorial meeting in Brussels, where he far outclassed the field and stormed home in a time of He first ran against his great rival Steve Ovett in a schools cross country race in Ovett took second, breaking Coe's UK record with a time of According to Pat Butcher, [20] Coe's father and coach Peter Coe had encouraged him to run as fast as he could from the start.
