New Delhi: British double Olympic champion Sebastian Coe today (Oct 2, 2004) said sports had a unifying ability and must not be used to meet cheap political ends.

"I am always worried when sport is used in a way, in areas to do what the politicians want to do. It is very easy to use sport for cheap response, but it is a wrong vehicle," said Coe who won back-to-back titles in the 1500m event in 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games.

Coe, who is in city as Jury of Appeal for the 13th World Half Marathon championships tomorrow, cited the Indo-Pak cricket series as an example of how sport could help bring people together.

"Sport has an ability to unify, to help in situations of political complexity, as it helped between Pakistan and India through the re-implementation of cricket.

"Sport helps maintaining contacts, and when we stop sport, it creates a pressure for change. The last thing we want is countries being isolated.

"Politicians come and go, political systems come and go, sport is a permanent fixture," he said.

Coe is one of the greatest mile runners in athletics history. He broke a dozen world records in his career but is remembered more for defying Margaret Thatcher's call for boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games.

Athletics would always be indebted to Coe for that courageous act, because that Games and the next in Los Angeles witnessed the greatest rivalry on track, between him and Steve Ovett, that made the mile an event of its own.