Sebastian Coe teenage years

I am currently reading "The Perfect Distance" the Ovett and Coe story. The book talks about both Ovett and Coe as teenagers through world records and Olympics. I am only about a 1/4 of the way through, but I really like the book so far.

I've got the Coe/Martin book at home that details some of his racing seasons and training in earlier years. I'll type up some of it on here later this afternoon

Coe's times/performances as a teen were very good, but nothing Earth shattering. As another poster said, he will post later. I have all of Coe's books and home and have read them a number of times. He was a very slight, awkward, almost sickly looking mid-teen. When he developed physically (late HS-early college years) is when he made tremendous jumps in performance.

He made big improvements at Loughborough (college) under Dave Horwill. They did tons of speed drills, plyometrics, and sprint training. It was customary fopr Coe to run a few 400m/4x4 races every spring. His PR for an open 400m was 46hi, and he split 45.xx several times in college and later in his professional career.

Coe REALLY made a huge improvement just weeks after graduating from Loughborough when he set the 800m WR at Oslo in 1:42.33, shaving over a full second off Juantorena's WR. If you watch that race, Coe looks so smooth, it defies logic and sanity. Coe goes through 400m in 50mid, the just floats...He looks like he could ahve run 1:40 that day.

Here is the video, although it only shows the last 250m of the race:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_iWymJgBI

I know he considered himself one of the Mods, rode around on a scooter, wearing tailor-made Italian suits, thin ties, and winklepickers, and listened to The Jam. Other than that, I heard he ran a lot.

Who is Dave Horwill? Don't you mean the late Frank Horwill?

However it was George Gandy who was actually the coach at Loughborough (or so I understand).

Coe was more of a 1500/3000m runner in HS (according to the Coe/Martin book), running 3.45 and 8.14 as a Junior (age-group). He doesn't appear in the top 25 UK as a Junior over 800m, so likely a combination of late maturation (5'9", 119lbs at 19yo) and a good strength development program at Loughborough helped move him toward faster times over 400m/800m.

It is also possible that it took him years to adapt to the program of his father as they seemed to experiment with a number of things that appear to have been over-doing it a bit (Horwill's influence) at times. He lost a year to stress fractures at 18yo as well.

It does show what a talented, motivated athlete can do, even with no "real" coach - his father had no formal training as a coach - but Seb was an "experiment" that worked out well in the long run, as Coach Coe was prepared to learn from others (so kept an open mind), which too many other coaches don't seem to do - it's their way or the highway (even if their way is wrong for a given individual).

Did daddy Coe coach any other athletes?

On my site you will find some of his early races, maybe this is some help for you:

http://thegreatdistancerunners.de/SebastianCoe.html

page 3 there you go, bit difficult to read but it's all there.

and of course George Gandy's famous plyometric sessions

This is tremendous. Thanks.

said88 wrote:

On my site you will find some of his early races, maybe this is some help for you:

http://thegreatdistancerunners.de/SebastianCoe.html

Deanouk is your man for that info

I remember him saying in an interview that he ran 1:56 when he was a Sophomore in HS or Secondary (don't remember if he said he was 15 or 16) and that at the time it was a PR for him.

Down the backstretch wrote:

Did daddy Coe coach any other athletes?

Later,, yes. He coached Wendy Sly for the latter part of her career, Helen Thorpe, and one or two others. He also advised Marius Bakken, as Marius's diaries and blogs reveal.

His group trained with mine on Sunday mornings in the late 80s. While he was perfectly polite and a very clear thinker, to be honest he wasn't massively approachable nor that interested in the club athletes there (unlike his son who was great company). Very different from most other coaches who tend to open up and chat with anyone about training and want to encourage everyone to do better. To be brutally honest, I think he was driven by competitiveness more than love of the sport and only advised a handful of athletes who he felt had potential to reach the top...

Documentary on Coe form the 1980s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP-zmivvoSc&feature=related

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Deanouk is your man for that info

I think it is generally accepted that Seb's break-through race was his 1:47.7 800 late in the 1976 season.

Of course, it depends on your interpretation of break-through.

Coe hill training. Fascinating and inspirational.

3 mins onwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKgUuMzMWk4&feature=related

Peter Coe's life itself is worthy of a film/biography. To know what motivated and drove Seb on you need to know about his father:

At the age of 19, Peter Coe was one of five to survive when their merchant navy boat was torpedoed in the Atlantic during the Second World War. Picked up by a German boat, he was put to work in the kitchen because he spoke fluent German. He later escaped by jumping off a train taking him to a prisoner of war camp. He then walked through the day and night to Spain, where he was jailed for six months and badly beaten .

Lord Coe once recalled his father having a fierce row with a British athletics official. "After wards I said to him 'You don't scare easily.' He replied: 'I don't scare at all. The past 45 years have been a f@cking bonus.' That fearlessness made him a great man to have in your corner. He had an extraordinary influence on my life."

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/peter-coe-coach-and-father-of-sebastian-dies-at-88-889752.html

Randy Oldman wrote:

Coe hill training. Fascinating and inspirational.

3 mins onwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKgUuMzMWk4&feature=related

pretty damn interesting.

codger wrote:

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Deanouk is your man for that info

I think it is generally accepted that Seb's break-through race was his 1:47.7 800 late in the 1976 season.

Of course, it depends on your interpretation of break-through.

Yes, you're absolutely right. Up to that 800 time trial in Stretford (1:47.7), Coe had been primarily a 1500/3000m runner. It represented a pb of over 3 secs, and was run off very little "specific" 800 training.

Although he never scaled the same dizzy heights as a junior as say Ovett (European senior silver at 800m at 18) or Ryun, Coe was still world class in his teens (for the time!) before fully developing physically at about 20/21.

People forget that he was the best 16 year old in the UK at 3000m (winning the English Schools title in 1973 in 8:40), and actually came 10th in the national X country in 1972 aged 15, a year younger than most of those (including Ovett in 2nd) ahead of him.

By 18 he was the European Junior bronze medallist over 1500m in 1975 (3:45.2).

I read somewhere that he came 2nd in the Yorkshire Schools 100m when he was 10 or 11, so he clearly had great natural speed from an early age. When he joined Hallamshire Harriers at about 12, he ran mainly X-Country and distance races on the road. This seems to be the pattern for most of his early teens, thus building himself a solid endurance base.

1976 and 1977 seem to be the turning point when he emerged as a serious contender for top honours. After his 1:47 pb at the end of 76, he emerged on the indoor scene in early 77 to win several top 800m races, culminating in an undefeated campaign with 3 British records and a front running gold medal performance in the European indoors, where he ran 1:46.5, missing the World indoor WR by 0.1.

After missing most of the early outdoor season with injury (his first race wasn't until July), he got into his stride late that year: - he outkicked Bayi ( the then 1500m WR holder) to win the famous Emsley Carr Mile in 3:57 and set his first UK outdoor record of 1:44.95, which made him the 4th fastest in the world that year. The next big step forward was joining Loughborough Uni at the end of 77 and starting a regimen of weights and plyometrics under George Gandy. It was at this stage that he was able to "tap in" and develop through strength, that natural speed he had shown from an early age.

Here are a couple of links to videos on Youtube which show his "gangly" form as a young teenager. The programme is in Italian I think, but stick with it, as there is footage of him I've never seen anywhere else.

It's about 1:10 mins in on this first part.

There's a bit more (not much) in the last 2 mins of this section.

Hope this helps the OP!

...One thing for sure, he didn't get laid as a teenager.