Indeed, one suspects that Britain’s supreme sporting statesman may even be wondering if he has chosen the wrong race: wouldn’t he be better off running for Mayor of London than running the wretched mess that is world athletics?

As he peruses the hundreds of pages of the newly-published report by the Independent Commission on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency into global corruption in the sport he cherishes, he must think he has blundered into a vipers' nest.

The phrase "poisoned chalice" does not even begin to cover the position he now holds as the freshly-elected President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Sections of the media he has offended by aggressively attacking their justified investigations into the doping that clearly is endemic within track and field now have him in their sights and seem determined to gun him down even before he has barely begin his tenure.

In a withering riposte the London Daily Mail, for example, accuses him of being "compromised beyond repair" and "not just an apologist but the champion of a regime that has smelt wrong for years". 

Yet if Coe is guilty of anything, it is surely something he never did as an athlete. Jumping the gun.

He was far too quick off the mark, making a false start in accusing the media of making "a declaration of war" on athletics over the doping issues and also in buttering up his now apparently discredited, and under arrest, predecessor Lamine Diack, as his "spiritual leader". 

Of course Coe, always the consummate politician, seemed to say many things he felt necessary to the process of getting himself elected but some are now coming back to bite him on the behind.

What is happening in athletics is "a whole different scale of corruption than the FIFA scandal or the IOC (International Olympic Committee) scandal in respect to Salt Lake City", according to Richard McLaren, one of the report’s co-authors. He predicts it will be "a real game-changer" for the sport.

Coe’s own integrity has never been in doubt. But for such a man of the sporting world he seems to have been somewhat naive.

He continues to argue that athletics' response to doping is better than most sports. Up to a point, Lord Coe. 

For someone who was so sure-footed as a double Olympic champion, prolific breaker of world records, with his zero tolerance to drugs-taking and as the prime architect of one of the finest of Olympic Games, he has an innately stubborn streak.

I have known him since he was a teenage athlete of promise so it is hard to criticise after four decades of friendship. But like others who have admired and supported him over the years - and still do - I urge him to cut his ties with Nike now. Indeed, it is imperative he does so.

He may claim he is not compromised by being a paid ambassador to the sports equipment giant, but in time he might be. Especially with questions now being raised about the awarding of the 2021 World Championships to Eugene Oregon, aka "Track Town", where the company has its headquarters.

He may also consider it politic, so to speak, to step down now from the chair of the British Olympic Association for no other reason than the massive fight he has to restore the credibility of athletics to a sceptical world surely must absorb most of his available time.

True, being leader of the world’ s biggest sport in terms of member associations, is not a paid appointment, though perhaps it should be. But the expenses are generous and Coe is certainly not short of a few bob, with the capacity to earn a decent crust not only from his various successful business enterprises, but as an in-demand five-figure celebrity speaker. He should not need Nike’s pocket money.

As an unmitigated cynic, I have always believed that a huge number of elite athletes - I won’t go as far as to say a majority - are, or have been on the gear at some time. And I imagine that deep down Coe suspects this too, but has been too diplomatic to say so publicly

As a genuine boxing buff he must realise that it is not sufficient just to keep your guard up. He must now come out fighting, punch his weight and not be afraid to bloody the noses of powerful forces.

Like Vladimir Putin, who no doubt is less than enamoured to see Russia portrayed as the root of all evil in sport, with allegations of football’s 2018 World Cup ballot being pre-ordained in their favour and now this scathing report claiming systematic doping in Russian athletics was covered up by lining the pockets of its own officials and subsequently some of those in the IAAF. Including the dodgy Senegalese judge who apparently ran what was tantamount to a protection racket.

If this means removing Russia from international competition, so be it.

Clearly Coe has been badly shaken, perhaps for the first time since Steve Ovett beat him to the tape in the Olympic 800 metres in Moscow.

But now he needs to be armed with more than a new broom to clean up after this tsunami. Cancelling the IAAF’s annual beano in Monte Carlo was a gesture but sweeping changes are required to the very structure of the IAAF - on a similar scale to those in FIFA.

He must not resort to the old political ploy of forming a committee to hold an enquiry and reporting in several months time. If ever.

He is better than that.

With cycling still failing to come to terms with doping despite lancing the Armstrong boil, and with the FBI feeling the collars of the miscreants at FIFA, it is the turn of athletics to squirm as a major international sport is sucked further into the quicksands of corruption.

No-one is better equipped than Coe to rescue athletics from this awful mire, but first he must admit that he has been hasty in defending the indefensible.

But he will find it hard to convince the sceptics that, after eight years as one of the discredited Diack’s closest henchmen, he really had no idea of the dark misdeeds swirling around the IAAF corridors. Was he naive, hoodwinked or uncharacteristically blinkered? Whatever, it is time to stop being politically correct, and start rocking the boat.

He must, in his own words, "rebuild the trust in our sport" by grasping the opportunity to diffuse the growing belief that this is one race even he cannot win.