<p><br /> Sebastian Coe has led the tributes to former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch, who has died aged 89.<br /> </p><p><br /> Samaranch, IOC president from 1980 to 2001, died in hospital in his home town of Barcelona on Wednesday.<br /> </p><p><br /> Coe, the London 2012 chairman who had been close to Samaranch for three decades, said he had been an inspiration.<br /> </p><p><br /> Coe said: "I have lost a friend, one that moulded my path through sport from my early 20s, and the world has lost an inspirational man.<br /> </p><p><br /> "A man that challenged us all to fight for sport, its primacy and its autonomy, a fight he led fearlessly from the front creating an extraordinary sporting movement that reaches millions of people around the world. He was quite simply the most intuitive leader I have ever met."<br /> </p><p><br /> Samaranch took over as head of the IOC after the Moscow Games and presided over a revolution that saw the amateurish sporting organisation transformed into a billion-pound industry.<br /> </p>
