Coe was born Percy Newbold Coe in Stepney, the only child of carpenter and joiner Percy Coe (1893–1974), who had served with the East Surrey Regiment and East Kent Regiment during the First World War,[1] and Violet, daughter of professional gambler and gymnast (part of a family music-hall tumbling act) Henry Brereton Newbold.
[6] Coe worked in the merchant navy at the age of 19, during the Second World War, and was on a boat named the A.D. Huff that was torpedoed by the German battle cruiser Gneisenau, leaving him as one of only five survivors.
[11] As an engineer, Coe became dissatisfied with the athletics coaching offered to his son Sebastian at his first club, Hallamshire Harriers.
This training was based on the principles propounded by the New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard, and involved a substantial amount of long-distance running.
By contrast, Coe took the view that "long slow training turned you into a long slow runner", and adopted a system of speed-endurance training involving fast repetitions with short recoveries, based on the ideas of the German coach Woldemar Gerschler.