Coe warns on interference in sport: Keep politicians on the bus but out of the driver's seat

BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — Sebastian Coe has a simple approach to avoiding political interference in global sport.

“The balance is keeping the politicians on the bus but not letting them anywhere near the steering wheel,” Coe said at the European championships Friday.

The World Athletics president was responding to a question about avoiding political turmoil at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics while speaking to journalists. Other topics included track and field's ban on Russian athletes , private equity in sports and FIFA's credibility crisis following a controversial overturned red card at the World Cup.

FIFA was criticized after U.S. President Donald Trump made a phone call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino urging that U.S. forward Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension be overturned . World soccer's governing body lifted the suspension. Trump will be nearing the end of his second term when the LA Games take place.

The 69-year-old Coe, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, led the 2012 London Olympics bidding and organizing committees.

“I ran the London Games. I know it’s really important that you have really good working relationships with government, prime ministers,” said Coe, a former elected member of the British parliament. “The delivery of the Games is in large part predicated on those relationships — with Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, in our terms the Home Office."

But with phone calls to influence a sporting matter, it's “entirely down to the resilience of a sporting organization to say, ‘I hear what you say, but thank you and goodnight,'” Coe said, noting about keeping politicians out of the driver's seat.

“I think I probably achieved that quite well in London. But not having those relationships is dangerous. Of course, there’s a balance.”

Infantino's failed plan to sell World Cup profits to private equity investors has landed the FIFA president in a battle to retain his post .

Coe said the idea was “not as unfamiliar territory as people tend to think.”

“For the last decade, private equity or sovereign wealth funds have been investing in sports,” he said.

The ambitions of each member federation, he added, are tied to their ability to raise revenues.

“Private equity is a big play in many sports. There are individual athletics federations at this very moment I know are discussing partnerships with external sources of revenue including private equity,” Coe said. “That’s the way it should be, and that’s what I’ve encouraged our federations to look at.”

Infantino has acknowledged his FIFA proposal lacked transparency.

“What you want to absolutely make sure,” Coe said of private investors, “is when that does take place that your sport has the kinds of governances and checks and balance and the type of consultation that allows people to understand the rationale, the ambition and what the execution looks like. That is critical.”

Coe noted that World Athletics has broadcast and sponsorship deals expiring in 2029, so seeking external sources of revenue is “an absolutely critical conversation to have. ... That debate has been taking place for two or three years, particularly at executive board level.”

Coe plans to be on hand at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to defend World Athletics' ban on Russian athletes.

In July, the International Olympic Committee lifted a suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and advised Olympic sports bodies they no longer need to vet Russian athletes for permission to compete as neutrals.

But World Athletics said it will maintain the ban it imposed shortly after Russian forces invaded Ukraine more than four years ago.

Russian Athletics has asked Switzerland-based CAS to overturn the sanctions .

“I will be in the Court of Arbitration (for Sport) defending our position,” said Coe, who lost a bid last year to become IOC president .

“We will continue to do what we think is in the best interest of our sport,” he added. "The primacy of an international federation to determine what eligibility looks like in the sport is the base of the pyramid.

“When we have been to the court before on previous occasions, that concept has been upheld. This is not about politics or passports. This is about the integrity of competition. That is the position we will be defending.”

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