The British newspaper The Herald has a wonderful article today marking the 50th birthday of Lord Sebastian Coe, the Olympic champ and world record holder who became a politician/sports official and won the 2012 Olympics for London. No, he’s not announcing an M50 masters comeback. But he epitomizes the masters spirit. We should all have his “lust for life in the fast lane.”

In case the link goes dead, here’s the profile:
Coe retains lust for life in fast lane
DOUG GILLON September 29 2006
AFTER they leave the arena, life is a trip back down for most sportsmen. The greater the peaks of achievement, the more humdrum the future. Living with diminished fame and fulfilment is the toughest lesson most athletes have to learn. Lesser mortals struggle to cope with being unable to match the feats of their youth to such an extent that lifestyle counselling is offered these days to sport professionals facing retirement.
So how has it been for you, Seb?
Lord Coe is 50 today. He once bestrode the athletics world: back-to-back Olympic 1500 metres gold, plus eight world records including three (800m, 1500m, and mile) in just 41 days, at the age of 22. Yet since Coe hung up his spikes, most things he has touched have continued to turn to gold. A millionaire in his business life, he now chairs the 2012 London Olympic organising committee. His keynote address overturned Paris, the perceived invincible favourites, so he is still master of the tight finish.
A Chelsea supporter for 39 years, Coe was recently appointed chair of the FIFA ethics commission. He denies having taken his eye off the Olympic ball, yet doesn’t rule out future advancement in either athletics or the International Olympic Committee. He has been tipped as a future president of both the IOC and the UK and world athletics bodies.
“I’m a full-time chairman, short of taking half an afternoon off to watch my sons play rugby.” He adds that, if 2012 colleagues can’t find time to watch their kids play sport, they don’t understand the philosophy “and probably shouldn’t be here”.
He says the FIFA job could not remotely blunt his London focus, yet feels in no way constrained by 2012 chairmanship. Astute politician that he has become, he rules out nothing. “I’m not particularly stymied on anything, because I never view one thing precluding something else,” he said.
“I think I’m incredibly lucky and privileged to be involved in the team here. Three years ago I don’t think any of us dared dream we’d be doing this, but I don’t tend to look at what I’m doing now as being an inhibitor on anything else I choose to do.
“I’ve always been a fairly free spirit. Lots of people told me three years ago, when I was offered the chair of 2012, that it was a poisoned chalice, that you can’t do this, you won’t be able to do that, and if you lose . . . My view was, well, actually, life’s rather short to think in those terms.
“There are very good examples in politics of people who have decided that at 23 they need to be here, at 25 they need to be there, and at 40 they need to be in the cabinet. And at 50 they are a complete failure unless they’ve become party leader. By and large, life doesn’t work out like that.
“I have always sensed that people who have done that have tended to become quite unhappy people. I’ve probably witnessed that more in politics than in most professions. So I really don’t sit here scheming.
“I’m not even standing for the UK Athletics presidency, and in terms of the IOC, well I’m not even a member. I’m sure people think I sit here being very strategic and Machiavellian, but I’ve never done that. When opportunities have come, I’ve tended sometimes, with a little bit of risk occasionally, to grab them.”
Coe declines to prioritise achievements. “I tend to think of them as different phases of my life. It may sound bizarre to some, but I was quite excited by becoming an MP (Falmouth and Cambourne, 1992), winning a hard-fought marginal constituency. If you look at my athletics career, winning two Olympic titles has to be right up there.
“If you look at my political career, which in representative terms was shorter [he lost the seat in 1997], I enjoyed being a government whip. I enjoyed winning the seat. I enjoyed actually defending it, unsuccessfully. I was very proud to have been a part of William Hague’s campaign team, and running part of his work.
“I look at the Olympic bid as being something else I did, and thank God it was successful, because I do think in big-picture terms that was more important than winning two Olympic titles. The effect of the Games coming to these shores is far greater than any individual win.”
On the eve of the Singapore vote last year, Coe lunched with several Olympic and Paralympic medallists. “We agreed we’d swop anything we’d done individually in sport if we got the right result the following day,” recalls Coe, “so I think that probably sums up what I feel about the comparison between winning at the Olympics and winning the bid . . . and I’m not sure any of that compares with the birth of your children.”
He believes the 2012 Olympics is “at the core of everything we can achieve. We really can inspire more young people in the UK to take up sport, but we are also very clear that we have a global responsibility to try to help other countries to do that as well . . . We’re very focused on that. But it’s more than just sport, its about helping improve the cultural fabric, like using the Games as a bridgehead to greater levels of environmental understanding. It’s engaging with young people across the board.”
He knows it won’t be easy, and says athletics’ problems can’t easily be solved: “The sport has lost a sizeable share of the market, commercially and in the age of those watching. The sport is not properly understood in the changing world we live in.
“Athletics is not one game and it’s not simple. My kids can throw down two jackets in the backyard and they are playing the World Cup final, but you can’t have an Olympic pole vault competition in your back yard.
“We’ve got to reshape the way major championships are presented. It’s okay for our generation, but our kids are not going to sit through 10-day world championships. It’s too long. Athletics is now in the graveyard of televised sport . . . its not cutting edge enough. We have to communicate better with young people who get their information in different ways.”
Coe intuitively knew he would end up in politics. Days after his 1500m defence in 1984 he recalls thinking: “I’d been really lucky. I was blessed with natural talent, did a lot of hard work, had a great coach, and enjoyed the rub of the green. I came to the conclusion that anything else now was a bit of a bonus. I started to realise there had to be life outside the stadium. So in my own mind I set out on a path of transition, and instinctively knew one way or another that it would have to be representative politics. It was not a calculated plan.”
In 1979, the year he graduated in economics and accountancy, Coe was also breaking world records and having interviews in the city. He considered banking, political journalism, and the civil service until the advent of trust funds “changed my sport and my life, beyond description”.
Old habits die hard. “I work out every day. It can be running, or cycling, which I enjoy a lot. It can be lifting weights. I try to do something, even if it’s no more than half-an-hour on the treadmill. I get up most days around 6am, and I’m genuinely excited about what I am going to do.”
He admits to two frustrations: “I enjoy writing, and don’t get time to do that properly, and I’d love to have learned a musical instrument properly. I’d love to have played the clarinet. My favourites are players only the most robust jazz fan would have heard of: Barny Biggard and Albert Nicholas . . . Don’t get me started on jazz, or we will be here all day.”