Swedish industrialist Johannes Sigfrid Edström was the first. When the organisation was founded in 1912 the letters stood for International Amateur Athletic Federation and the emphasis was very much on the word “amateur”. The Stockholm 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe had just been stripped of his medals for playing professional baseball. This decision set the tone for Edström's Presidency and beyond.

He remained in charge until the end of the Second World War but the debate on amateurism raged throughout. The biggest star was the "Flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi, who had dominated track and field in the 1920s. He had also capitalised on his fame financially and was banned from taking part in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics for infringing amateur regulations.

“I am much in favour of keeping a tight rein on stars who are secretly professionals, and this is what Nurmi appears to be.” wrote Edström to IAAF secretary, fellow Swede General Bo Ekelund.

It was a move that made the Swedes very unpopular in Finland at that time but Scandinavian countries more united in their attitude to the participation or rather the non-participation of women in athletics. The IAAF did not go so far as to ban women but their programme remained very restricted until the 1960s.

During the war, Edström kept in touch as much as he could with officials in other countries. He finally relinquished his control of the IAAF in 1946, now 76-years-old, by which time he had become President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

“Sigfrid Edström is one of the greatest figures of the Swedish sports movement," wrote Ekelund. "For nearly half-a-century he has helped to guide its destiny, Active leaders of sport are always glad to ask this wise older statesman for advice in important matters.”.

Edström's successor was Lord Burghley, a British aristocrat who could trace his lineage back to the court of Queen Elizabeth the First in the 16th Century. At Cambridge University, he completed the Great Court run before the clock had struck 12 at Trinity College in 1927. The episode re-created in the film Chariots of Fire, and was also attempted by Coe and Steve Cram in a charity race in 1988.

Like Coe, Burghley was an Olympic champion. His gold medal came over 400 metres hurdles at Amsterdam in 1928.

Burghley became a member of the IOC before he reached the age of 30 and led the Amateur Athletic Association in England for the next 40 years.

By the time he became IAAF President, he was also chairman of the British Olympic Association and headed the Organising Committee for the London Olympic Games of 1948, just as Coe was to do in 2012.

The athletics world he inherited was fragmented.

Germany and Japan were excluded in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. They did not return until the 1950s.

“Through his considerable efforts, international amateur athletics made a spectacular recovery after the Second World War” said the IOC Review.

The Soviet Union had not taken part in athletics since the 1917 Revolution. As an aristocrat, Burghley must have seemed an unlikely man to thaw relations but on his watch, teams from the Soviet Union were taking part in the Olympics and European Championships and also making trips to Western capitals for prestigious floodlit track meetings.

IOC President Lord Killanin later observed: “The Soviets respected him because he was an athlete."

By now, Burghley had inherited his father’s title and was known as the Marquess of Exeter. He remained a staunch defender of the amateur code. His IAAF tenure coincided with an era when state sponsored athletes from the Eastern Bloc and college runners and throwers in the United States were to all intents full-timers. the term coined to describe them was “shamateur”.

Exeter’s Presidency lasted into the 1970s but the IAAF was now criticised for being out of touch.

American Pole vaulter Bob Seagren warned of a breakaway professional circuit and talked of “people who have no compassion and understanding for athletes”. A world record-holder, he had not been allowed to use his newly designed pole at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. He lost his title and had angrily thrust the pole he had been forced to use into the hands of Adriaan Paulen, an IAAF vice-president.

It was Dutchman Paulen who succeeded the Marquess of Exeter. He was almost three years older than the outgoing man..

He had been an Olympic 800m finalist at the Antwerp Games of 1920 and joined the Dutch resistance during the Second World War.

As IAAF President at an awkward time of transition, he expelled some prominent athletes for infringing amateur rules, among them Montreal 1976 Olympic 110m hurdles champion Guy Drut and American high jumper Dwight Stones. The bans were later rescinded.

Paulen presided over the introduction of the IAAF World Cup, an international team competition first held in Düsseldorf in 1977. Soon he devised the “Golden” series of showpiece events with sports promotions agency West Nally.

The threat from doping grew .The IAAF slapped life bans on five Eastern Bloc athletes but these were lifted shortly before the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

This led to criticism for Paulen who later admitted, ”I realise from the reaction of the athletics world that the decision was not a right one."

He held office for the shortest time of any IAAF President. In 1981 many felt he was outmanoeuvred by the ambitious Italian Primo Nebiolo,  who persuaded him to stand down,

Nebiolo cut his teeth as President of University Sports Organization (FISU) and helped build bridges where none existed. In the early 1970s he invited the Chinese team to a meeting in Rome. This was a major breakthrough.

Once in power he polarised opinion. For his supporters he was a visionary. In 1987 he changed the voting structure to give every nation a single vote. This was described as a “pivotal moment”. Critics saw it as a blatant attempt to build a power base.

The 1987 IAAF World Championships in Rome were memorable, but soon beset by scandal. An incorrect measurement , apparently made to order, gave Italian long jumper Giovanni Evangelisti a bronze medal at the expense of Larry Myricks of the US.

The IAAFs initial investigations found nothing wrong but an enquiry by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) told a different story. Evangelisti wanted nothing to do with his medal and gave it away.

Nebiolo courted further controversy when allowed the scheduling of morning athletics finals at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

In Seoul came the biggest scandal of all. The men’s 100m final. It became known as “the dirtiest race in history" when champion Ben Johnson was disqualified for testing positive for anabolic steroids. Many of the other competitors later failed tests, including Britain's Linford Christie, winner of the Olympic title four years later in Barcelona.

Nebiolo’s record in combating doping was questioned. There had been no positive tests at the inaugural 1983 World Championships in Helsinki and only one in 1987. Critics such as future World Anti-Doping Agency President Richard Pound cast doubts on the credibility of the testing.

Nebiolo had moved the IAAF headquarters from London to Monaco at short notice and it was here that he established the International Athletics Foundation for “perpetuating the development and promotion of athletics worldwide".

It is claimed that over 300 projects have received funds from the foundation in almost 30 years since its formation.

At the time, the IAAF President did not automatically become an IOC member. In 1991 however, a rule change gave IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch the power to co-opt Nebiolo who also led the The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), the organisation which represented the sports that made up the programme at the Summer Games.  

“The President can designate two members without distinction of nationality or domicile," said the rule change. "These designations must be motivated by the function of the persons concerned."

Under Nebiolo, the IAAF World Championships were staged at two year intervals and in 1997 the IAAF Grand Prix became the Golden League, complete with gold bars as the star prize. “Every Golden League is like the Olympics,” said Nebiolo.

In 1999, after 18 years at the helm, he became the first IAAF President to die in office. The New York Times described him “as a figure of great ego and ambition who expected to be treated regally".

Yet those in the developing world had a different view

“The world of sport has lost a great leader who took athletics to the dizzy heights of professionalism,” said Olympic Council of Asia secretary Randhir Singh.

Nebiolo’s successor was the first non-European to lead world athletics. Lamine Diack of Senegal was a long jumper whose Olympic aspirations were cut short by injury

“Now this era of Kings dictators and popes has ended,“ he said upon his election.

Diack was an influential voice in Africa’s Supreme Council for Sport. and first elected to the IAAF Council in 1976. In the following decade he rose to vice-president and fiercely opposed apartheid. South African-born Zola Budd had been granted a British passport, despite many protests. When she won gold at the 1986 World Cross Country Championships in the Swiss town of Neuchatel, Diack refused to join the presentation party. “I have nothing against Miss Budd but I cannot give a prize which will be seen as propaganda for South Africa," he said. 

Five years later, Diack joined an IAAF delegation which travelled to the Republic of South Africa as apartheid crumbled and in 2006 he invited Budd to an IAAF Gala in a gesture of reconciliation.

Another South African posed a problem not encountered by previous Presidents. Uncertain about the advantage that could be obtained with the use of prosthetic limbs, the IAAF initially banned South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius from taking part in able-bodied events. The ruling was eventually overturned in the Court of Arbitration for sport and Diack described the runner as “an inspirational man". Pistorius duly competed in the 2011 World Championships in Daegu but will miss this year's event in Beijing as he is currently serving a five-year sentence for the manslaughter of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. 

Throughout Diack’s Presidency concerns about doping have been to the fore. British athletes led by Paula Radcliffe held up placards to protest against erythropoietin in 2001 during a race at the World Championships in Edmonton. Sprint champions Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin were amongst the big names who failed tests in the next few years.

Diack claims the IAAF  “has a comprehensive and well funded medical and anti doping programme”.

Since the Millennium, the athletics circuit has continued to grow. The Diamond League has helped generate huge sums in television rights. Diack claims that IAAF financial reserves now top $65 million

He was described by the late IAAF treasurer Robert Stinson as “a considerable diplomat and a great President”.

But he leaves with his organisation under fire once again following media investigations into doping and criticism from London marathon organisers.

Whatever the result in Beijing, the IAAF will be led by an Olympic champion for the first time in 40 years. Bubka and Coe have both promised a “zero tolerance” attitude to doping but like their five predecessors, they will not be in for an easy ride.