Lord Sebastian Coe: ‘If you do not protect women’s sport it will not end well’ - Yahoo Sports

The head of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, is gunning to become the president of International Olympics Committee (IOC). He is extremely pro-women’s sex-based sport and is not afraid to make tough decisions to protect women’s sport.

“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.”

The current IOC leadership allowed, and defended, male boxers smashing their female counterparts in the women’s division at the most recent Olympics. 

Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are both male and were allowed to compete in female boxing with Khelif taking home the gold medal.

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.

“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 winced at the scenes in boxing, he replied: “I was uncomfortable.”

Becoming president of the IOC is not guaranteed and the result will not be known for some months. If successful Coe will get to work closely with new President-elect Donald Trump who is vehemently opposed to males in female sport. 

Unlike Bach, Coe would at least 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, unlike every other American president who has been in a position to be hosting a Games, wouldn’t want a Games that embraced the world and reflected the country he lived in,” he said. “I was there in ’84, the last time the Olympics were there, and Ronald Reagan created a landscape for a hugely successful Games.”