18 December 2023 , 23:38
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Seb Coe insists Katarina Johnson-Thompson deserves to be crowned Sports Personality of the Year tonight “because she has won something”.
Mary Earps, the odds-on favourite, established herself as a cult hero as star of the England team which reached the Women’s World Cup final.
She is shortlisted alongside former cricketer Stuart Broad, jockey Frankie Dettori, tennis player Alfie Hewett and golfer Rory McIlroy.
All had decent years but Johnson-Thompson, the 2019 world heptathlon champion, completed an astonishing recovery from injury to reclaim her title.
Coe said: “It's a world championship, so of course I'm going to say this. And this isn't being remotely disparaging about anyone else on that list.
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“That's not my issue. The issue is that there are two truly global sports; one is football, one is track and field. And both Katarina and Josh Kerr won a world championship in one of the most fiercely competitive sports on the planet.
Mary Earps is favourite to win SPOTY but Coe (below) is backing KJT (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
(Getty Images for World Athletics)“Do I think there was room for both of them on that list? Of course I do. There is only Katarina Johnson-Thompson, so of course I'm going to say, as the president of World Athletics, I would be voting for her.
“She's a world champion, it was an extraordinary comeback - and she won a global world championship.”
Johnson-Thompson’s next target are the Paris Olympics - and Coe is unhappy at the cost of watching athletics there, with prices as high as £850 a ticket.
Coe: “These are going to be the most expensive ticket prices in an athletics arena that we have witnessed at an Olympic Games” (AP)“These are going to be the most expensive ticket prices in an athletics arena that we have witnessed at an Olympic Games,” he said.
“You want fans in the stadium, you want fans paying affordable prices. if I am wearing my World Athletics hat, I don’t want fans being costed out of the stadium and I certainly don’t want athletes and their families being costed out of the stadium.
"There are always going to be premium tickets, but it is important that our stadiums are full of people that love our sport, not people that can afford to get to an Olympics.
“We have made the point that these prices are lumpy.”