Lord Coe has defended the ban on trans women from elite female athletics events, claiming without it ‘no woman would ever win another sporting event’.
Last March World Athletics decided that it would exclude trans women who had gone through male puberty from elite female events.
While speaking at the Hay Festival today Lord Coe, the World Athletics president, claimed that the ban was essential to preserve the integrity of the sport.
The 67-year old said: ‘You can’t have a sport where young girls feel there is going to be a biological ceiling beyond which they can’t move.’
He continued: ‘They have to believe they are capable of going from the playground to podium with some protection.
‘If we didn’t do this no woman will win another sporting event and it is as binary as that.’
However, Lord Coe continued that the importance of the debate should not be overshadowed by the culture wars and that if it was ‘important for their journey’ nothing should prevent trans women from competing in amateur events.
‘I find the so-called culture wars are the most depressing disfiguring element in British politics at the moment,’ adding that they should be kept out of the trans ‘space’.
Coe, who was a Conservative MP from 1992-1997, also added that World Athletics had set up a working group, with a transgender athlete as a member, to ‘look at this landscape and understand some of the other issues’ that effected them.
Moving on to the summer Olympics in Paris, he criticised the events association with the mega giant soft drink company, Coca-Cola.
He argued that the partnership has been going on for nearly 100 years but if it was looking to start over with its corporate partners the company might not be involved, as the soft drink can be linked to many of society’s obesity issues.
‘I am not an apologist for Coca-Cola, far from it, but they have been with the Olympic movement since 1928. If you were coming fresh to the table now maybe that would not be a brand that is automatically there,’ he said.