The Minister for Sport and the Olympics was looking at his phone as he stood in the hectically busy bar of Monte Carlo's Fairmont Hotel, and the expression on his face was one of satisfaction. As well it might be, given the text of congratulation was from "dc".

The Prime Minister - for it was he - had delivered a recorded message in support of London's bid for the 2017 World Athletics Championships which had been played during the presentation the IAAF Council, and played its part in getting the whole effort across the line at the end of a long and arduous process which had begun, abortively, with negotiations to secure the Championships of 2003, and then 2005, and then...

Oh, it's too long and complicated to go into now.

Lord Sebastian Coe, of course, was a harrier in his days as an Olympic champion. But the discipline he showed mastery of as he headed the London presentation to the IAAF Council members for whom he is already a vice-president was the hurdles. God knows there have been enough of them for this British endeavour.

The feeling was beforehand that the IAAF wanted to finally award the Games to one of their oldest and best heartlands – as long as London didn't shoot itself in the foot again. By the time it came to the vote, the ground around that foot was drilled with bullets, but the foot remained intact thanks to the late intervention which guaranteed the 2012 Olympic Stadium for future athletics use.

For all the dizzying financial promises made by the rival Doha bid, a sizeable majority of the voters – London won it 16-10 – held true to a vision which, in Coe's estimation, served as the completion of a story which had been begun with the 2012 Games.

Coe, too, was among those shuttling between the Fairmont bar and the booming attraction of the Buddha Bar further up one of this principality's vertiginous sets up steps towards the Casino Square. How he deserved his drinks.

In the all-but-deserted room in which the press had sat to see the TV link to the presentations being made in another part of the Fairmont Hotel, the large screen continued to show images - and the speaker alongside it to broadcast sound - from that same room.

It was fascinating to watch the body language as Coe moved through the crowd, with the camera tracking him. Some members he hugged with clear warmth. Others he shook by the hand. Yet others, perhaps remembering Don Corleone's good advice, he clasped to his bosom.

Later, in the bar, the Minister, Hugh Robertson, briefly speculated upon who the 10 members voting for Doha might have been. Those calculations will go on in private as far as Coe is concerned, given his ongoing commitment to the International Association of Athletics Federations as one of its vice-presidents and as a man who clearly has the potential to become yet more important for track and field's world governing body.


As he sat alongside the IAAF President Lamine Diack at the post-vote press conference, Coe's bearing was, you would have to say, also Presidential as he steered the line between being British and being International.

In praising the "unprecedented" levels of support which had been given to track and field in Britain despite the parlous economic times, he doffed his cap to the Minister and the man who sat at the end of the London dais, Boris Johnson, the capital's Mayor. Johnson had made another of his rousing but faintly alarming contributions to the London cause which finished with a game and spirited attempt in French to underline the permanence of athletics – "et aussi pour le football et le pop music" - in the heart of the Olympic Park.

As the relieved applause, to which Diack had contributed with a broad grin – one showman appreciating another? – died down, Coe changed the mood to one of calmer diplomacy.

"These are always complicated days, because actually I wear two hats. I'm here as a bidder, and I'm here to win the right to host the World Athletics Championship, but for the remainder of the year I wear my other hat which is as a representative of the sport globally. Mercifully, actually both hats, I think have pointed to London today and the delivery of a World Championships to London I think will serve global purposes extraordinarily well.

"I'm very open about this, I would not have supported this bid simply because I come from that country. I supported the bid because the vision we created in 2012, and the vision these guys have crafted for taking the sport forward, back everything I said six and a half years ago. So for me this is a perfect story.

"And let me, rather like the President, congratulate Doha, because their bid was a solid bid, the presentation was a powerful presentation, and we do need to globalise and build capacity in our sport.

"And yes, sometimes that does mean taking it to challenging environments. I'm sure that over the next decade we will be looking to broaden the sport and broaden that global reach in all sorts of territories. But today the bid London offered was the right bid at the right time.

"And I genuinely think that it meets all our domestic legacy commitments, certainly growing the sport in the UK, but in large part the global vision that the President set out in the beginning of the World Plan that seems to bring to fruition that thinking next year."

It's all there, isn't it?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.