How quickly the mighty can fall. Over the last couple of years, Lord Sebastian Coe has been branded pretty much the greatest human being on the planet.

It was reported that he was a shoo-in to become London Mayor if he stood for election. Similarly, he was the front-runner to become Chairman of the BBC Trust. If the post of King of England was going, he’d have been odds-on to get that too. But the double Olympic gold medallist wanted to run the sport that he had been involved in for nigh on half a century. He declared last year that he would stand for election for President of the IAAF and it was this decision that threatens his downfall.

The man who masterminded London 2012 seemed, on paper, to be the perfect man for the IAAF job; one who would bring integrity and resolve to one of the most powerful positions in world sport. Well, as it turns out, Coe has become a major part of athletics’ problem rather than its solution.

Dick Pound’s independent report which was released on Monday and revealed evidence of “state-sponsored doping” within Russia was a hammer blow to athletics. The road to redemption will be long for the most high-profile of Olympic sports and if it wishes to regain the public’s trust, Coe is not the man to lead the rehabilitation.

The first misstep that the 59 year-old former Tory MP took was in August, shortly before his election as President, when he described allegations of widespread doping within his sport as “a declaration of war”. And so, with these four words, Coe showed his true colours as a man who was more interested in protecting the reputation of athletics and those who ran it than cleaning up the sport. Further misjudgments followed. The lavishing of praise on his predecessor as President, Lamine Diack, who is being questioned by French police for allegedly taking money in return for covering up positive Russian dope tests, was shameless and has proved to be astonishingly inappropriate.

Pound’s findings have severely damaged athletics yet it is likely that there is worse still to come. A chapter on the IAAF’s conduct has been withheld due to the ongoing criminal proceedings and so further blows are likely to rain down on Coe. The Englishman has been involved with the IAAF since 2003 and vice-president since 2007 yet he claims to have been oblivious to any nefarious activities. In the eye of the public, Coe is becoming just another self-serving blazer whose primary concern is themselves rather than their sport. Athletics’ primary problem is not, in fact, the dopers, who are certainly in the minority; rather, the sport’s greatest challenge in the coming months and years is overcoming the perception that it is riddled with cheats and liars and having Coe at the helm is not helping mitigate this belief.

For a man who so rarely appears flustered, Coe looks like he has had a few sleepless nights in the past week. Jon Snow’s takedown of him on Channel 4 News on Monday was both masterful and majestic. “You were either asleep on the job or you were corrupt- which one was it?”, asked Snow. Unsurprisingly, an answer was not forthcoming.

And all of this is before we even mention Coe’s sponsorship by Nike- a partnership which is such a blatant conflict of interest that it becomes boring to point this out. Or that he was chairman of FIFA’s Ethics Committee. Coe owes his sport some answers yet his default setting is defensiveness, blaming anyone other than himself for his numerous failings.

Today, Coe and his IAAF executive committee will meet to decide what sanctions to apply to Russia. Pound has suggested that the nation should be suspended from the sport; whether Coe concurs will be revealed imminently. But if there is even a single Russian track and field athlete competing at Rio 2016 then athletics can wave goodbye to the sport having any appeal whatsoever to the public.

For athletics to begin to rebuild its reputation, Coe must leave his post and the sport needs to restart with a clean slate. Coe is getting closer and closer to being seen as another Platini or Blatter or Diack; someone who’s ego is bigger than his brain. A successor will be hard to find- someone of Pound’s calibre would be the perfect candidate but those individuals are few and far between.

What recent history has proved to us, though, is that the most able individuals in running organisations are not gravitating towards sport. The love of a sport has always been cited as a prerequisite of heading up a governing body but the overwhelming evidence suggests that the presence of this quality has no connection with competence.

Perhaps an outsider, with no baggage and no skeletons in their closet would be the best person to clear up athletics’ mess. One thing is for sure though, whoever it will be, it mustn’t be Coe.