Coe helping to attract athletes to Melbourne

London's successful 2012 Olympic bid chairman Sebastian Coe has been employed as a paid consultant by Melbourne's 2006 Commonwealth Games organisers to try to attract athletes to the event next March.

Coe's London team won the right to stage the Olympics in seven years time when they pipped favourites Paris at an International Olympic Committee vote in Singapore earlier this month.

"He travels around to all these countries talking to the athletes," 2006 Games chairman Ron Walker said yesterday.

"In order to help our ticket sales we've got to produce the superstars and that's exactly what Seb is doing."

Walker said promoters of events in the US and other countries were offering huge purses to athletes to forgo the Melbourne Games.

He added Coe had been instrumental in convincing world 100 metres record holder Asafa Powell to go to Melbourne and that several other "big names" would be confirmed at the world athletics championships in Helsinki next month.