PARIS: Track and field chief Sebastian Coe has hailed the emergence of an “extraordinary” group of athletes at the Paris Olympics who have gone some way to filling the void left by Jamaican legend Usain Bolt.
Bolt was a transformational figure in athletics, winning eight Olympic and nine world gold medals as he dominated the sprints during his stellar career.
Talk since his retirement after the 2017 world championships in London has always been about who might step into his shoes as the leading pin-up for the sport.
But Coe insisted the narrative wasn´t just about one athlete alone to fill the void.
“We are no longer a sport about one person,” he told reporters in Paris on Sunday, all the while praising Bolt.
“That one person was Herculean, that one person transformed the popularity of our sport for a very clear period of time, and he consistently did that.”
Coe likened Bolt´s legacy to that of Muhammad Ali in boxing.
“You don´t replace Muhammad Ali, you don´t replace Usain Bolt. But I did say, ´Mark my words, other athletes will come through´.
“I cannot remember a generation of more talented athletes. “The way they´ve come through has been extraordinary. We´ve now got a greater bandwidth of talent across a broader range of disciplines than we´ve ever had in the sport.”
More than one million tickets were sold for the Olympic athletics programme at the Stade de France that saw athletes from 75 different countries bag top-eight finishes.
