World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has defended the choice of Hungary’s capital Budapest to host this month’s world championships and also said the sport’s latest doping case was actually a reason to celebrate.
Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban is strongly opposed to what he calls the European Union’s “LGBT+ offensive” and last month the US ambassador to Hungary blasted him for opportunistically stirring up hatred against gay people.
Coe, speaking to selected reporters on a conference call ahead of the August 19-27 championships, said: “The world is a complex place, it’s becoming more complex by the year and that isn’t going to change.
“So one thing that does need to adapt here is sport and sport is ultimately probably the most adaptable organism that is out there and in an uncertain world sport is the only anchor point.”
The International Olympic Committee has argued in the past that taking the Games to countries such as China would help accelerate a greater respect of human rights.
Athletics itself held its world championships in 2019 in Doha, the capital of Qatar, whose own approach to human rights came under intense scrutiny when it hosted the 2022 men’s football World Cup.
Coe, the head of the largest Olympic sport, said his ideas and those of the IOC “don’t always run in parallel” — but he added: “On this one, I agree.”
“Do countries use sport? Of course they do?” he said.
“One thing I can tell you is that I have never, ever been involved in sport that has gone anywhere, particularly into challenging environments, where it has left that society politically, culturally, socially worse off for being there.”
Doping case ‘lends confidence’
Athletics was dealt a blow in July when women’s 100m hurdles world record holder Tobi Amusan of Nigeria, the reigning world champion from last year, was charged with an alleged anti-doping whereabouts rule violation.
Amusan is accused of missing three tests in 12 months.
Coe argued that far from tarnishing the sport’s reputation, such cases “lend confidence”.
“Our sport has improved its reputation more than any other sport in the last two years by a distance because we have been prepared to tackle the issues around doping,” he said.
“I would much prefer to have the occasional headline which none of us actually want than the knowledge that we were gently declining into a landscape where we didn’t have the systems in place to weed out the people we don’t want in the sport.”
It was, he said, “not brain surgery” for athletes to identify “one hour a day where they are going to be” so anti-doping testers can locate them.
Looking ahead to the action in Budapest, Coe said the handful of world records set so far this season suggested “these have the potential to be the best world championships performance-wise of all time”.
Coe picked out the men’s shot put as an event he was looking forward to.
Ryan Crouser of the United States set a new world record of 23.56m in May. “He is in the form of his life again,” Coe said. “The men’s shot put from 2019 onwards has been unmissable.”
Coe, the double Olympic 1,500m gold medallist, identified the women’s middle distance events as the track events to watch.
Reigning champion Athing Mu of the USA against British challenger Keely Hodgkinson in the women’s 800m would be one highlight and Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan who has set world records at the 1,500m, mile and 5,000m — outstanding performances — was another, Coe said.
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