At the time, Sebastian Coe - for it was he - did not even have a seat in world sport’s most influential club.

This was in spite of catching its attention as an orator as early as 1981, as a 24-year-old athletes’ representative at a ground-breaking Olympic Congress in the German spa town of Baden-Baden.

Nevertheless, as I wrote in the Argentine capital, “with memories of London 2012 still fresh in the mind”, it was “hard to stifle the thought that he, as much as Bach, might yet embody the future of Olympism”.

A headline on the back page of Monday’s edition of The Times - "Coe may run for IOC top job" - suggests we could soon discover whether I was right.

The main supporting quote - "I’m not ruling it in, and I’m certainly not ruling it out" - commits him to nothing.

But I am going to do the World Athletics President and his exceptionally able media handlers the courtesy of assuming that they know exactly the effect that such a headline, backed up by a double-page interview-spread in the newspaper still seen in some places as the voice of the British Establishment, is likely to have across Olympicland.

My working assumption, accordingly, is that this is a classic "dipping toe in water" exercise, and that whether or not Coe does launch a campaign to succeed Bach in 2025 will depend, in part, on the reaction he gets to this “not ruling it out” in coming days and weeks.

Having first encountered him around 30 years ago, when he was Member of Parliament for a seat in Cornwall in the English West Country and I was a callow Parliamentary reporter, my sense is that he would only run if he was fairly confident of winning.

And for all his obvious attributes, there are a number of equally obvious potential impediments to a Coe victory in any Bach succession contest.

First, Bach might try to soldier on.

I personally find it impossible to imagine the 69-year-old donning carpet slippers and fading gracefully from the scene when he is entitled to remain a full IOC member for another decade.

But, as insidethegames editor, Duncan Mackay, has written, "it is increasingly being whispered that family pressure is set to persuade him to end his spell at the helm".

Second, Bach might seek to get his preferred successor elected.

This could be Coe, but the smart money at present is on Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry.

With the IOC having shown almost zero volition to stand up to Bach in recent years, running against a Bach-backed candidate would be a brave, some might say foolhardy, move.

Third, Coe is both male and European.

This too could be a handicap at a time when many believe the IOC should plump for its first female President and only its second non-European.

With this in mind, if you hear Coe playing up the non-European part of his family heritage in coming months, it could be a sign that he is minded to run.

I was interested to read the following in this week’s Times interview:

"The Indian part of my family, on my mother’s side, also had political connections. I had an uncle who was the High Commissioner in London. A cousin ran India’s intelligence services."

So much for the downside; now, should the IOC welcome a Coe candidacy?

Well, he has been there and done that, having delivered a hugely successful Summer Olympics and run Olympism’s bedrock sport in testing times.

You would be hard-pressed to argue convincingly that athletics was thriving at present, but he has faced up to some tough issues; one feels at least that one has some sense of the direction the sport thinks it should be heading in.

In managerial style, a Coe Presidency of the IOC would be a huge - perhaps refreshing - change.

Unlike Bach, a German lawyer, Coe simply does not come across as in any way a details man.

But he is an excellent delegator: time and again individuals he has selected, or had a hand in selecting, for key roles - Paul Deighton, David Howman, Jackie Brock-Doyle and so on - have performed outstandingly; round pegs in round holes.

This enables him to retain a relaxed air while focusing his attention on the Big Picture - and conserving some time for other things - family and outside interests such as jazz and Chelsea Football Club.

His strongest suit, for my money, is best conveyed in the form of a question: of the possible leading candidates, who could you most readily imagine standing up for the best interests of international sport among the rich and powerful of the earth?

A good IOC President, after all, must be a missionary and a prophet, but more than anything a diplomat.

Yes, he can be pompous, and he is no great fan, or such is my impression, of the iconic insidethegames tie.

There may be other shortcomings - though he has lived most of his life in the full glare of a public spotlight of comparable intensity to the one that an IOC President must face.

But at least with a figure of Coe’s stature in the President’s seat, the IOC could be sure that it had a grown-up in most of the rooms where it needs to establish a presence.

That is much more important with a big job like this one than matters of gender or geographic origin.

I think it would be in the IOC’s best interests if he does run - and if other candidates of comparable or superior ability emerge along the way, then so much the better.