In an interview with Piers Morgan on Thursday, World Athletics head Sebastian Coe said he would be open to allowing Russia back into the Olympics if he were elected president of the International Olympic Committee.
Coe, 68, appeared on Morgan’s Uncensored YouTube channel, in a wide-ranging interview that focused mostly on whether Russia could be permitted back into the Olympics — and World Athletics’ stance on excluding transgender athletes from events in the women’s sports category.
“I am by nature a social liberal,” Coe said in the interview. “I really do not choose to — nor do I have any predispositions to — tell people how to live their lives. But when it comes to the biology of sport it is very, very clear cut. And I am surprised that it has been such a contentious discussion as it has become.”
He added, “I’m not oblivious to the trauma the people go through if they transition — I absolutely respect that. We have a working group at World Athletics looking at this and maintaining a watching view on changing science and the politics on this. We also have a transgender athlete on that commission. But when it comes to the female category in elite sport, it has to be sacrosanct.”
On February 10, World Athletics announced that it had begun a consultation process to clarify it’s own regulations for transgender and difference of sex development (DSD) athletes. A proposed motion would require cheek swabs if these athletes looked to compete in women’s events.
A press release at the time noted that the governing body is making the preservation of the “integrity” of female competition a top priority and is taking five recommendations from a December 2024 council session into consideration.
“And the reason I think it’s so important, is that you cannot have young girls coming into the sports and sense, or feeling, in any stage, there is a glass ceiling to their ability to perform at the highest level,” Coe said in his interview with Morgan. “You simply cannot have this lack of clarity.”
Coe affirmed that World Athletics and the consultation group was focused on issuing distinct rules that leave no question about what female eligibility is defined by the governing body.
Later in the interview, Coe was asked whether there would be an option on the table to allow Russian athletes to compete in the Olympics if her were elected as the next International Olympics Committee president. Coe indicated that he would support including Russia in future Olympic Games if President Donald Trump were successful in brokering a peace agreement with Russian president Vladimir Putin to end war in regions of Ukraine.
Russian forces entered Ukraine in February 2022 and the armed conflict quickly escalated. In response, IOC officials quickly banned Russian athletes from participating in any Olympic competition.
Shortly after the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the IOC issued stiff sanctions against Russia — and Belarus, as it supported the armed conflict.
“The IOC condemned the senseless war in the strongest terms on the day of the invasion,” an IOC statement read in 2023. “With no end in sight to the fighting after one year of bloodshed, the IOC reiterates its condemnation of the war in Ukraine, which is a blatant violation of the Olympic Truce that was in effect at the time, and the Olympic Charter. For this reason, the IOC sanctioned the Russian and Belarusian states and governments, who are solely responsible for this war, in an unprecedented way.”
“It’s not for me to design peace treaties,” Coe said during the interview. “All wars end with a table, a map and people. Depends where the table is, who’s sitting around it and what does the map look like.”
Coe added, “If you get to a situation where you have a peace agreement then you would have to look very closely [at lifting the Olympic ban].”
Coe is among seven candidates vying to become the next Olympic committee president. The winner will be elected on March 20 and takes office June.
