PA Media/DPA
London
Sebastian Coe has promised he will introduce a "clear-cut” policy to protect female sport if he is elected president of the International Olympic Committee.
Coe says he has been "in training for most of his life” for the Olympic movement’s top job, but refuses to be a "vanilla” candidate and strongly believes the IOC is in need of a major reset.
That includes ensuring athletes are fairly remunerated from the billion-dollar revenues which flow into the IOC’s coffers, but he also wants to make the protection of female sport a top priority.
Double Olympic champion Coe, who is the president of World Athletics and organized the 2012 London Olympics, admits he was "uncomfortable” watching the boxing tournament at the Paris Games this year.
Two athletes disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing gender eligibility criteria - Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting - won gold medals.
"It has to be a clear-cut policy and international federations must have some flexibility,” he said.
"But it is incumbent on the IOC to create that landscape. It’s a very clear proposition to me - if you do not protect (the female) category, or you are in any way ambivalent about it for whatever reason, then it will not end well for women’s sport.
"I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacrosanct.”
Asked if the Olympic boxing tournament had made him wince, he replied: "I was uncomfortable.”
Individuals who have gone through male puberty have been banned from female elite-level events in Coe’s sport since March 2023 and World Athletics has also tightened its rules on athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD).
The IOC ran the Olympic boxing tournament - including its entry criteria - and faced criticism over allowing Khelif and Lin to compete.
The organization has condemned the abuse directed at the fighters during and since the Games.
Coe is also determined to examine ways to ensure more of the IOC’s income - recorded at $7.6 billion for the cycle ending with the 2021 Tokyo Games - flows to athletes in all sports and the international federations.
Members will elect one of the seven candidates as the new IOC president at the IOC Session in Athens in March.