Somewhat alarmingly it makes him appear a slightly fresher-faced doppelganger of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. While no doubt the last thing Coe would wish to be lumbered with is the label of a Corbynista,  it is likely the equally besieged pair might feel they are sharing the same metaphorical bunker. 

Maybe Coe thinks the fashionable whiskery grey appendage will provide a bit of a cushion while he continues to take it on the chin as the tsunami over the sleazy infestation of his sport refuses to abate.

If he wasn’t aware before, he knows now that his irritating shilly-shallying and apparent ignorance of what was going on around him when he was at the right hand of the crooked judge Lamine Diack has piled upon him much scepticism, costing him a huge slice of the respect and global admiration he won as a record-breaking athlete and subsequent brilliant orchestrator of London 2012.

That needs to be regained.

Coe must now show himself as the Caesar’s wife of sport, beyond any future suspicion.

If there is any comfort for him at all at this time it is that athletics is by no means the lone sinner among high-profile sports. Indeed, there is barely one left that is beyond reproach.

We are now hit by more sensational revelations, this time from the world of tennis, alleging that matches, including Grand Slams and even some at Wimbledon, have been rigged over the past decade or so, with the world number one Novak Djokovic even claiming he had once rejected a bribe of $200,000 (£140,000/€184,000) to throw a match.

I am not surprised. During my days covering tennis there were several occasions when I suspected matches were being thrown, especially one in the final of a French Open in the sixties.

Tennis is one of the easiest of sports to fix – apart from snooker which has had more than its share of fraudulent frames.

You simply hit the ball into the net, beyond the baseline or serve up double faults.                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Over the years no sport has been more sullied by suspicion than boxing. As the promoter Frank Warren points out there have been numerous forensic forays by the media into the fight game.

But none have been able show that there is crookedness or corruption. “That’s because bent fights and the like simply do not exist," argues Warren.

Obviously it is a gross overstatement to say that the structure of modern professional sport is now rotten from top to bottom, but thanks to rogue gambling syndicates the rats are gnawing away fast at the foundations.

Football, cricket cycling, athletics, snooker, horse racing, rugby and now tennis – all have had skeletons rattling in cupboards that have now been exposed by a media which has intrepidly trodden where the authorities have feared, or were shamefully disinclined, to do so.

What next? Bungs in bowls?

In contrast pugilism seems a paragon which may be why Coe is such a fan.

At least it seems that Coe has recognised the magnitude of his own big fight ahead for redemption for both himself and athletics, saying that he has to be “absolutely brutal, on myself and unflinching on the changes I’ve got to make" in order to restore public confidence in track and field.

Yet one doubts such confidence can ever be fully re-established. Because of what has gone on before there will always be doubts about the validity of certain achievements.

Perhaps above anything we need to know if Coe has the cojones to take on Vladimir Putin and keep Russian athletes out of the Rio Olympics should their anti-doping reforms not be transparently evident to everyone’s satisfaction, not just the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Coe’s critics complain that he has responded to inquisition with supercilious sound-bites but those who know him well believe he likes to measure his words as carefully as he did his strides on the track.

But it is time now for him to speak in the plain language of sport and not what might be interpreted as the mealy-mouthiness of politics while he attempts the task of righting the considerable wrongs.

And time for doubters to call at least a temporary truce while he does so.

Someone close to Coe, whose integrity I respect, tells me that the double Olympic gold medallist was genuinely gobsmacked when he learned of Diack’s massive impropriety.

But he fully admits that in retrospect he should have known what was going on behind his back and accepts that for this aberration alone he has to bite the bullet.

What appears not to have been totally understood is that the malaise within the IAAF permeates far deeper than even that which has poisoned FIFA.

This is because whatever the financial crookedness, the bungs and backhanders, employed by those who ran world football, it did not result in unfair competition in matches. Results weren’t falsely achieved as so many have been in athletics because of the scourge of doping.

Coe has privately intimated that while he intends to serve his initial four year term as IAAF President, if he has not made substantial inroads into the massive cleaning-up operation required within a couple of years, or there is "a shred of evidence" of impropriety on his part, he expects his head to roll.

But who would take over should that happen? Or would have done so had the former World Anti-Doping Agency chief Richard Pound, instead of giving him a vote of confidence, suggested that Coe should be held in some way culpable when he presented his explosive report into the Russian doping scandal?

Sergey Bukba? I doubt he has the necessary clout, and so did the majority of the IAAF electorate when they instead voted Coe into office last summer.

I’ve scratched my head and can’t come up with an alternative figure of note who might do a better job. Can you?

That job is one which in the circumstances necessitates virtually full-time commitment, and now should be adequately salaried. 

So should Coe, who, if belatedly and seemingly reluctantly, forfeited his £90,000 ($129,000/€119,000) a year ambassadorial role, with Nike, also step down from the chair of the British Olympic Association immediately, and not after Rio 2016 as he plans, and hand over to his good friend Sir Hugh Robertson, the newly-elected vice-chair?

That surely is something else he must ponder with the Olympics now less than 200 days away.