Coe, chairman of London 2012, had delayed his arrival at the Beijing Games in order to spend time with his father in hospital.

 

Coe arrived in Beijing early this morning, and his father died several hours later.

 

He will return to Britain once the funeral arrangements are known.

 

Coe had lost his mother, Angela, in 2005.

 

Peter Coe was an engineer who became a self-taught coach after realising that the coaching strategies for middle-distance runners in the 1960s and early 70s were flawed.

 

He introduced revolutionary ideas to Coe's training and helped his son win two Olympic 1500 metres golds, two Olympic silvers in the 800m and break 11 world records.

 

Fearless and famously tough, he said to his son after Coe's defeat by Steve Ovett in the 800m at the 1980 Olympics: "You ran like an idiot."

 

Sebastian Coe said of his father last month: "My father had an extraordinary influence on my life."

 

Born in East London, only a mile from the Olympic Park will be built for 2012, Peter Coe was only 19 when the merchant navy ship he was on was torpedoed in the Atlantic.

 

Only five men survived out of more than 200 on board.

 

Picked up by a German destroyer, he was taken to La Rochelle and sent by train to a prisoner of war camp in Germany.

 

Instead, he and a Canadian escaped from the train and walked across France, over the Pyrenees into neutral but fascist Spain where he was interned for six months.

 

"He was picked up and put in prison and really badly knocked around," said Coe junior.

 

After the war, Coe senior qualified as an engineer, and moved his family from London to Sheffield when Seb was a boy, for a job at a cutlery factory.

 

Coe junior was 12 when he joined Hallamshire Harriers, and his father soon became convinced that prevailing coaching methods were outdated.

 

"Slow running produces slow runners" was his mantra, and instead introduced to his son's training a programme of short bursts rather than miles and miles at slow pace.

 

Coe said recently: "The old theory was that to run 800m you had to run 100 miles a week.

 

"My dad took that idea apart.

 

"To run a world-class 800m time you run 80 per cent of the race without enough oxygen, so he started me on a programme which cut the miles to a third but had me running 40 200m consecutively with a 30-second recovery.

 

"Or six 800metres."

 

Coe senior made it his mission to seek out the best knowledge available - he could read coaching manuals from East Germany himself and had Russian ones translated at Sheffield University.

 

He and his son went on to write several books together about the science and coaching of running.

 

British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan said Peter Coe was one of the best coaches he had seen.

 

Moynihan said: "In the world of coaching and inspiring and influencing there are few men in the history of British athletics of whom it could be said that they were truly among the greatest.

 

"Peter Coe's contribution to Seb's success, to British athletics and to everyone who had the privilege of knowing him was always of gold medal standard."