Coe has weighed in on a controversial sports debate, backing a high-profile stance while emphasizing fairness, competition integrity and future policies.
If US president Donald Trump is seeking to exclude transgender athletes from women’s sport, he has found an ally in Sebastian Coe, the World Athletics president and International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidential candidate.
Coe, who has long advocated for the protection of female categories in elite sport, stated that Trump is “right in principle” to push for such a policy.
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a recent interview with Piers Morgan Uncensored, Coe reiterated his commitment to maintaining the integrity of women’s sport.
“I welcome the commitment to maintaining the integrity of women’s sport. For me, this is absolutely about the integrity of competition,” Coe said as quoted by The Guardian.
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Coe distanced himself from Trump’s specific methods, such as the proposal to restrict visas for transgender athletes traveling to the U.S., calling those measures a domestic issue.
However, he emphasized the necessity of protecting female athletes from unfair competition.
“I am by nature a social liberal, I really do not choose, nor do I have any predisposition to tell people how to live their lives, but when it comes to the biology of sport it is very, very clear cut,” Coe said.
“And actually I am surprised it has been as contentious a discussion as it has become.”
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Trump’s executive order, signed earlier this month, aims to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s categories and puts pressure on the IOC to reconsider its inclusion policies ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games.
It also seeks to revise immigration rules concerning transgender athletes entering the U.S. for competitions.
World Athletics, the governing body for track and field led by Coe, has already implemented strict rules preventing transgender women from competing in female categories if they have gone through male puberty.
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The organization also plans to introduce cheek swabs to confirm the biological sex of athletes, treating transgender competitors and athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) under the same policy.
Research cited by World Athletics suggests that males retain a performance advantage over females even before puberty.
“When it comes to the female category in elite sport, it has to be sacrosanct,” Coe told Morgan.
“The reason, I think, it is so important is that you cannot have young girls coming into the sport and sensing or feeling that at any stage there is a glass ceiling to their ability to perform at the highest level.”
The debate over transgender participation in sports has intensified globally, with governing bodies in cycling, swimming, and rugby also tightening their policies to preserve female competition.
Coe insists that World Athletics has been careful in its language and approach.
“You simply cannot have this lack of clarity. So [in] World Athletics, we were very clear, we followed the science and I think that is critical, I think we have used language that is moderate. We are not rabid here,” he said.
The controversy over transgender athletes is just one of the many issues the next IOC president will have to navigate.
Coe is one of seven candidates vying for the top job, with the election set to take place in Greece on March 20. Another major challenge facing the IOC is the ongoing war in Ukraine and its impact on Russian athletes.
The IOC banned Russia from competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics due to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though some individual Russian athletes were permitted to participate as neutrals.
