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The Meaning of Headlines: 'pipped' - athletics





Dawn published an article on August 20, 2015, with the headline: ‘Relentless Coe pips Bubka to IAAF presidency.’ What does ‘pips’ or ‘pipped’ mean?

The article is about former elite British runner Sebastian Coe who ‘pipped Sergey Bubka in a tight vote to become the new head of international athletics’ – the head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) – from August 31, 2015. Coe (1956-) is a two time Olympic middle-distance athletic champion – gold medal in Moscow in 1980 and gold in Los Angeles in 1984 for the 1,500 metre distance with silver medal in 1980 and 1984 for the 800 metre distance. Ukrainian Sergey Bubka (1963-) is an Olympic pole vault champion, winning a gold medal in Seoul in 1988 competing for the Soviet Union until 1991, then competing in subsequent Olympic Games for Ukraine.

What does ‘pips’ or ‘pipped’ mean? The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘pip’ as ‘defeat by a small margin or at the last moment.’ The Collins English Dictionary defines ‘pipped’ as ‘to defeat (a person), especially when the successor seems certain’ (often in the phrase pipped at the post). A pip is also a seed in a fruit or vegetable, representing a small amount. So did Coe defeat Bubka by a small margin or at the last moment?

The article maintains that Coe received 115 votes in a ballot of the IAAF’s 50th Congress, 23 more votes than Bubka, who retained his position as an IAAF vice-president. The IAAF has 214 members, and 207 voted on Wednesday August 19, with the final votes at 215 for Coe and 92 for Bubka. The presidency is generally for a four-year term. Both the IAAF website and this article do not explain the voting procedures – for example, whether it is a once-only vote or a series of voting until two people remain. Nor whether the winner is by simple majority. In this case, Coe received 56% of the votes, while Bubka received 44% of the votes.


Scorecard for the Dawn headline: 56%. To win ‘at the last moment’ doesn’t seem to apply in the IAAF presidential voting system – there was no countdown in the last round – and it seems that there was only one round of voting. Coe won by 23 votes (a 12% margin) and therefore the defeat of Bubka was not ‘by a small margin.’ If the margin had been less than 10 votes, I would say that Coe ‘pipped Bubka in a tight vote’ or that the loser Bubka was ‘pipped at the post.’ But 23 votes is not really pipping.


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