Sebastian Coe elected new president of IAAF

Sebastian Coe has won a four-year term as president of the governing body for track and field, beating Sergei Bubka in an election Wednesday and given the mandate to restore the image of the IAAF amid a doping controversy.

The 58-year-old Coe won the election by 115 votes to 92 and will replace Lamine Diack, who stood down after 16 years.

Coe, a two-time Olympic champion and chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee, reportedly travelled 700,000 kilometres (435,000 miles) during the campaign and, unlike Bubka, had only nominated for the top job without the fallback option of vice-president, meaning he would have lost influence within the IAAF if he'd lost the poll.

"In the best traditions of everything we both believe in our sport, it was fought according to sound judgment throughout," said Coe, who described his election as the second-most momentous event of his life after the birth of his children.

Ukraine pole vault great Bubka, a former Olympic and world championship gold medallist and long-time world-record holder, retained his position as a vice-president in a subsequent poll.

The IAAF election, held in the lead-up to the world championships in Beijing, has been overshadowed by intense criticism of the world body following media reports that it has failed to act on evidence of widespread blood doping.

German broadcaster ARD and Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper citied leaked test results from a 2011 study in an IAAF database and asserted that blood doping was rampant in the sport.

The IAAF last week denied it had tried to block publication of the study, and confirmed that 28 athletes had been caught in retests of their doping samples from the 2005 and 2007 world championships but said none of the athletes will be competing in this year's competition, which start Saturday.

Coe, who last week described the allegations as a "declaration of war" against the sport, has proposed a fully independent anti-doping tribunal to deal with the issues.

Diack defended the IAAF handling of doping under his watch, saying it had continually discussed the problems, introduced new measures to combat advances in doping and was at the forefront of the anti-doping campaign in sports.

"A newspaper stole some information from our databank but our officers have reacted in an admirable way," Diack said at the opening of the congress. "They have said, 'This is what we have done, this is what we're doing.'

"We will be holding these championships in Beijing and people will say '80 per cent of the athletes are bound to test positive,' but no, this is totally untrue," Diack added. "We must resolve, of course, the problem of doping. All the champions must be tested regularly and each country must have its own anti-doping body."

Diack had not publicly endorsed either candidate in the presidential election, but was delighted to see his successor was from "a new generation coming up and a man who has devoted his life to the sport."

"It's a great moment we've just lived," Diack said. "We can say our sport is in safe hands that are able to carry it up to another level."