Sebastian Coe has taken a thinly veiled swipe at the hugely controversial Olympic gender policy in boxing, saying that all sports governing bodies must tackle the issue head-on with a clearly defined stance.
The International Olympic Committee has largely farmed the issue out to individual sports, leaving a patchwork of approaches and two boxers competing in Paris who have reached the semi-finals after the International Boxing Association disqualified them last year for failing a gender eligibility test.
The IOC stripped the IBA of its status as boxing’s governing body over governance issues and say that the tests on Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting were not legitimate.
Coe is the president of World Athletics, which introduced a new gender policy last year that means any athlete with differences in sexual development (DSD) must reduce their testosterone to 2.5 nanomoles per litre to compete in any event. Transgender women also cannot compete in the female category in athletics.
Coe is seen as a leading candidate to succeed Thomas Bach as the president of the IOC and, asked on Monday what his advice would be on the boxing issue, he said: “It’s unvarnished; have a policy. Be clear and have a policy.
“You’re never going to make everybody happy but you have to plant the flagpole down somewhere and that’s why it was so important for us. If you don’t, then you get into this sort of territory.
“I did five years on the British Boxing Board of Control as an administrative steward, and I have daughters. How do you think I feel about this?”
Coe also hailed the Usain Bolt-esque arrival of Noah Lyles in men’s sprinting following his victory in Sunday’s dramatic men’s 100m final.
“If I’m wearing a promoter’s hat, then him winning last night was important, because he’s now creating a narrative that is heading us back into Usain Bolt territory and that is hugely important,” said Coe.
“It’s a recognisable face. It’s a face that has now got young people talking about athletics. Friends of mine who’ve got young kids, they’re now talking about Noah Lyles in the same breath as some of the highest profile sportsmen and women in the world. He is beginning to transcend the sport, which is really what we want them all to do.”
As an athlete, Coe also particularly admired how Lyles delivered on the biggest stage after being beaten in the heat by Britain’s Louie Hinchliffe and in the semi-final by Jamaica’s Oblique Seville. “Like all great individuals in sport and great teams, when it really matters they tend to find a way of winning,” he said. “He was never ahead in that race until the last frame of that photo finish. It was his kingdom last night – I saw a completely different Noah on the line in the final. I thought he looked slightly tentative in the first round, but he grew in stature.
“Your performance is your passport but promotion is everything. It’s not enough to be just another Olympic champion or another world champion – he wants to fill a stadium, he also wants to fill a press conference. And actually what he has to say is profoundly important for the sport.”
Coe also said that he had no issues with deciding a gold medal by just 0.005sec, Lyles’ margin of victory and something that would once have been impossible. “If you have the technology, you have to use it,” he said. “If somebody’s saying it’s a couple of thousandths, so be it. You speak to my kids or younger, they’re not fazed by the fact that somebody got across the line two-thousandths of a second. They think it’s rather cool, actually.”
