By Oliver Brown
Setting out his platform for the most powerful role in global sport, Sebastian Coe has promised to protect the women’s category by changing the International Olympic Committee’s emphasis from human rights to the basic rules of biology.
Coe, the head of World Athletics, who at 68 is attempting to succeed Thomas Bach as IOC president next March, admitted he was “uncomfortable” when he watched Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting win gold medals in women’s boxing in Paris despite having been banned from the world championships the previous year for failing gender eligibility tests, and indicated that such a situation would not be tolerated on his watch.
“It’s a very clear proposition to me – if you do not protect the female category, or if you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women’s sport,” Coe said. “I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacrosanct.”
Coe’s position contrasts sharply with that of Bach, who stuck throughout the Paris Games to the argument that womanhood could be determined by passport status – ignoring the fact that the two controversial boxers had failed sex tests in two consecutive years, with their results showing XY chromosomes, the male pattern. While the IOC disputes the validity of the tests, neither athlete has followed through with an appeal.
A central element of Coe’s presidential manifesto, which he hopes to announce next month, will be to move the IOC away from its human rights-based approach to the issue to a policy of ring-fencing elite women’s sport for biological females only. It is a shift he has implemented successfully in athletics, banning male-to-female transgender athletes from elite women’s events while compelling those with differences in sexual development (DSD) to undergo a minimum of six months of testosterone suppression.
While boxing, administered in Paris by the IOC, was engulfed by scandal, athletics encountered no such problems. This gives Coe an edge over three of his rivals for the top job, given that Jordan’s Prince Feisal Al Hussein, Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr and Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe – Bach’s preferred heir – all sat on the executive board that allowed Khelif and Lin to compete as women.
Imane Khelif celebrates her gold medal with her team and fans in Paris.Credit: Eddie Jim
“It has to be a clear-cut policy, and it is incumbent on the IOC to create that landscape,” said Coe, who agreed that the existing guidance was ambiguous. “I would want to make sure it is clear-cut.” Asked if he had winced at the scenes in boxing, he replied: “I was uncomfortable.”
The path to the presidency is complicated: while Coe is the most experienced candidate in the seven-person race, by virtue of having led London 2012 and running the most important Olympic sport, Bach is understood not to favour him as his successor. An IOC letter published in September clarified that members could not serve beyond the age of 74: a directive widely interpreted as being aimed at Coe, who would turn 76 by the end of an eight-year term as president.
But at a lunch in London, Coe insisted that his passion for the task remained undimmed.
“I have been in training for this for most of my life,” said Coe, a two-time Olympic 1500 metres champion. “I think I can make a difference, and I do have a plan and a vision for what that difference looks like. It would be extraordinary. Anyone who joins an athletics club at the age of 11 and spends his whole life in the Olympic movement, to be entrusted with the presidency? That would be a massive moment.
“I think change is necessary. We’re in a fast-changing landscape, and change is absolutely crucial. I have a passion for the Olympic movement. It has been my life. I don’t think there’s any job I’ve done where I genuinely think I’ve been better prepared for it than this one.”
Fleshing out his leadership style, Coe said: “I do genuinely work by consensus, but that doesn’t mean that, on occasions, I’m not prepared to make tough decisions.”
Should he succeed in being elected at next year’s IOC Congress in Lausanne, he would soon find himself working in close collaboration with United States President-elect Donald Trump, sure to be front and centre at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
Unlike Bach, Coe would bring the IOC closer into line with Trump’s vow to ban biological males from women’s sport in the US. “I cannot believe that Donald Trump ... wouldn’t want a Games that embraced the world and reflected the country he lived in,” he said. “I was there in ’84 ... and Ronald Reagan created a landscape for a hugely successful Games.”
The Telegraph, London
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