Sebastian Coe
IAAF Vice President and London 2012 Chairman

Sebastian Coe is Chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, having previously been Chairman of the London 2012 bid company.

Seb is a double Olympic Champion and 12-time world record holder in athletics. He won gold in the 1500m and silver in the 800m at both the Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 Games. He retired from competitive athletics in 1990 and became a Conservative MP and Private Secretary to William Hague. In 2002 he was made a Peer – Lord Coe of Ranmore. He received a knighthood in the 2006 New Year’s Honours List.

Seb is also a Vice-President of the International Association of Athletics and controlling shareholder of The Complete Leisure Group, a non-executive director of AMT-Sybex Group, and Chair of the Sport Honours Committee.

Favourite Athletics moment: Haile Gebrselassie winning the 10,000m Olympic title in Sydney, beating Paul Tergat by a smaller margin than that in the 100m final.

Hugh Robertson MP
Minister for Sport and the Olympics

Hugh Robertson MP was born in the Kent and Canterbury Hospital on the 9 October 1962. An army officer from 1985 – 1995, he saw active service in Northern Ireland, the Gulf war and in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo. He then joined the investment arm of Schroders.

He was elected to Parliament in June 2001 as the MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, and had been Shadow Minister for Sport and the Olympics since 2005.

Favourite Athletics moment: Lord Coe, coming back from injury to win the 1500m in 1984.

Boris Johnson
Mayor of London

Boris Johnson was born in June 1964 in New York. His family moved to London when he was five. He was educated in Camden, the European School in Brussels and Eton College before going on to read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford where he became president of the prestigious Oxford Union.

A career in journalism saw him undertake various jobs – including the Telegraph’s European Community correspondent and Editor of The Spectator where he stayed until December 2005. Besides his work as a journalist, Boris has published several books and has appeared regularly on popular television shows. In 2001 he was elected MP for Henley on Thames. He has also held shadow government posts as Vice Chairman, Shadow Minister for the Arts and Shadow Minister of Higher Education. In July 2007, Boris resigned from his position as shadow education secretary so that he would be free to stand as the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.

Favourite Athletics moment: Londoner Christine Ohuruogu storming to victory in Beijing to win gold in the 400m.

Baroness Margaret Ford
Chair, Olympic Park Legacy Company

Baroness Ford was appointed to Chair the Olympic Park Legacy Company on 1 May 2009.

She is also Chairman of May Gurney Integrated Services Plc and a Non-Executive Director of Grainger Plc. Margaret is an Honorary Professor of Real Estate at Glasgow University and a Member of the RICS.

Favourite Athletics moment: Mary Peters winning the 1972 Olympic pentathlon.

Ed Warner
Chairman, UK Athletics

Ed has been Chairman of UK Athletics since the start of 2007. Earlier this year, he was appointed Chairman of the IPC’s athletics technical committee. He has a career as a successful financier and currently chairs a small investment bank alongside other interests in the financial industry. He is a keen club runner having completed 12 marathons in the last few years.

Favourite Athletics moment: Paula Radcliffe winning the London Marathon in 2002.

Niels de Vos
Chief Executive, UK Athletics

Niels has been the Chief Executive of UKA since May 2007, leading the development of the sport and driving the creation and implementation of a UK-wide strategy that will take athletics to London 2012 and beyond.

Niels is a non-executive director of the British Olympic Association and sits on the European Athletics Development Committee. He was previously CEO of Premiership Rugby team Sale Sharks who he guided to the Premiership title in 2006. Prior to that Niels was Commercial and Marketing Director of Manchester Commonwealth Games.

Favourite Athletics moment: The British men’s 4x400m relay gold medal anchored by Kris Akabusi at the 1991 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

Cherry Alexander
Head of Competition and International Relations, UK Athletics

Cherry is currently the Head of Competition and International Relations at UKA, working for the governing body since 1991, and has worked in athletics for 30 years. She has been a member of LOCs for major events hosted in the UK since 1989 and is a keen endurance runner. Following tributes from Lord Coe, David Moorcroft and Brendan Foster, she was voted as 2007 Sunday Times National Unsung Hero in sport.

Favourite Athletics moment: Jonathan Edwards breaking the world record twice at the 1995 World Championship.

Claire Furlong
Head of Marketing and Communications, UK Athletics

Claire has been Head of Marketing and Communications at UKA since the summer of 2007. Prior to that, she held the same role at VERO Communications and the English Institute of Sport. Previously she was the Deputy Programme Director at talkSPORT Radio covering a range of major sporting events including the Olympics, Football and Rugby World Cups, British Open Golf and several cricket series. A keen but slow runner, she completed her first marathon last year.

Favourite Athletics moment: Usain Bolt’s brilliance in Berlin.

Simon Morton
Director of Major Events and International Relations, UK Sport

Simon Morton is Director of Major Events and International Relations, and is responsible for overseeing UK Sport’s lead role around the bidding and staging of major international sporting events, and developing the UK’s international sporting relationships. He was previously Head of Major Events at UK Sport and through this work he has sat on Organising Committees for World and European Championships across a wide range of sports.

Prior to UK Sport, Simon worked for the International Badminton Federation (IBF) for six years, fulfilling a number of roles including Head of Marketing.

Favourite Athletics moment: 2004 Athens Olympics 1500 Metre Final- El Guerrouj Wins Gold.

Lucy Crickmore
Major Events Consultant, UK Sport

Lucy has been a member of the UK Sport Major Events Team since January 2008 and works with a portfolio of Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth sports. Her role is to work with sports to develop their major event strategies and to offer technical support and advice in the bidding, planning and delivery of major international events. Lucy has worked across a large number of major World and European Championships including Athletics, Swimming, Hockey, Badminton, Ice Skating and Shooting. Prior to UK Sport Lucy worked as an Event Manager at one of the UK’s leading international sports marketing agencies.

Favourite Athletics moment: Being one of the fortunate people who can say “I was there” when Bolt won the 200m Gold to add to his 100m at the Beijing Olympic Games 2008.

Iain Edmondson
Head of Major Events, London & Partners

Iain is responsible for securing long-term major event opportunities for London. He has a career in delivering public/private partnership projects for sports facilities and events, and was a member of the bid team that secured the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for London. Iain has an MBA degree from the University of Cambridge and is a keen participant in mass participation events including the London Marathon.

Favourite Athletics moment: Seb Coe breaking the 1,500m world record in a packed stadium in Zurich in 1979 – his third world record in 41 days.

Alexandra Goldschmidt
Major Events Team, London & Partners

Alex joined London & Partners in June 2008 and has sat on the organising committees for the World Gymnastics Championships 2009, the Badminton World Championships 2011, and the inaugural London Restaurant Festival. Alex has also worked on the successful bids for the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2010, Rugby World Cup 2015 and the SportAccord Convention 2011, leading on the city co-ordination through to the delivery in April this year. As well as working on the 2017 bid, Alex is also supporting the FA on their 2013 Champions League Final planning.

Favourite Athletics moment: Memorable because of the emotion, an inconsolable Derek Redmond being helped around the track by his father in the semi-final of the 400m in Barcelona.

Karen Webb
Olympic Park Legacy Company

In a career which started off in journalism and has included working in TV and Champagne(!), Karen has spent the past 15 years in sports marketing and communications.

Karen has held senior positions with the International Olympic Committee, the Sydney Organising Committee and with London’s Olympic Park Legacy Company.

As a consultant, she has worked for successful Bids, including Rio 2016 and Rugby Sevens, for Games’ sponsors, GLA and Visit London and for the International Paralympic Committee.

Favourite Athletics moment: Cathy Freeman’s gold medal run in Sydney 2000. The anxiety I felt as she came around the bend, and then the unbelievable roar in the stadium when she had done it.

Greg Smith
Olympic Park Legacy Company

Greg has 15 years’ experience in the delivery of major sports infrastructure. At the OPLC, he is responsible for the legacy planning of the London Olympic Stadium. Previously Greg worked on projects such as the London Aquatics Centre, English Institute of Sport, Oval Cricket Ground and the National Athletics Facility Strategy.

Favourite Athletics moment: Ed Moses winning the 1987 IAAF World Athletics Championships 400m hurdles – simply a great race.

Andrew Crump
Head of Sports Major Events, Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Andrew brings a decade’s experience of providing Government support to major events. From within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, he helped establish the current UK Sport events infrastructure as well as working on events such as the 2012 Olympics, the 2015 and 2013 Rugby World Cups and the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

Favourite Athletics moment: Carl Lewis’s superhuman achievements at the ’84 Olympics.

Matt Hull
Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Matt, a novice triathlete, joined DCMS in 2003 and worked in the 2012 Olympic Games’ finance team. On joining the Major Events team in 2008, he was immediately thrust into the successful bids for the 2013 Rugby League and 2015 Rugby Union World Cups, he continues to support the governing bodies to deliver bids for major sporting events.

Favourite Athletics moment: 200m final Helsinki 1993: Fredericks wins a masterful gold with Regis snatching silver from the great Carl Lewis.