Track and field leaders signaled Thursday that it will be nearly impossible for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in that sport at the Paris Olympics next year if the war in Ukraine continues.
The World Athletics Council kept its ban on Russian athletes in international events in place “for the foreseeable future,” a move that goes directly against the International Olympic Committee’s efforts to find a way for Russian athletes to compete as neutrals in upcoming events.
World Athletics will form a working group to determine under what conditions Russians might return to international competition, but for now, there is no apparent pathway.
“The death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the deaths of some 185 athletes, have only hardened my resolve on this matter,” said World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, who has been the most outspoken sports leader on the topic since Russia’s invasion.
The move came on the same day World Athletics finally lifted a seven-year suspension of Russia’s track federation for a doping scandal that dates back a decade.
Though the federation is back in good standing so long as it adheres to nearly three dozen “special conditions,” the reinstatement did nothing to change the reality that Russians will not be allowed at track meets for at least several months, if not years.
Coe said he knows this policy will not be popular at the IOC meetings he is attending next week.
“There will be plenty of opportunities” to discuss the topic, Coe said. “But I think you can probably conclude the IOC is not in any doubt about where I sit on that issue.”
Russian reaction to the World Athletics’ decision was predictably outraged. Sports minister Oleg Matytsin referenced a speech IOC President Thomas Bach gave this week reiterating his position.
“We consider these politicized restrictions unacceptable,” Matytsin said. “The Olympic Games must remain neutral, and international federations must give all of the strongest athletes in their sport the right to compete.”
Coe said decisions coming out of the doping scandal have left it up to international sports federations to determine eligibility for athletes at the Olympics. World Athletics took the toughest stance of all sports. During the seven-year ban of the Russian track federation, only a handful of athletes were allowed into world and Olympic track competitions.
The sport is taking the same tact regarding the war. While some federations are following the IOC’s lead and trying to find ways for Russians who meet certain, still-unspecified criteria regarding neutrality to qualify for Paris, Coe said Russians are banned from qualifying events in track.
“There’s no ambiguity about it,” Coe said. “The primacy for the decision around eligibility rests with the international federation.”
All of this pushed what should have been big news – the official end of Russia’s role as a doping pariah – down a notch. Barring a drastic shift, either in the Ukraine war or the World Athletics policy, the country is still not expected to be a presence at the track meet in Paris.
“On the basis of what we know now, we’re very clear that this is not the right moment,” Coe said.
TRACK AND FIELD banned transgender athletes from international competition Thursday, while adopting new regulations that could keep Caster Semenya and other athletes with differences in sex development from competing.
In a pair of decisions expected to stoke outrage, the World Athletics Council adopted the same rules as swimming did last year in deciding to bar athletes who have transitioned from male to female and have gone through male puberty. No such athletes currently compete at the highest elite levels of track.
Another set of updates, for athletes with differences in sex development, could impact up to 13 current high-level runners, WA President Sebastian Coe said. They include Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters, who has been barred from that event since 2019.
Semenya, of South Africa, and others had been able to compete without restrictions in events outside the range of 400 meters through the mile but now will have to undergo hormone-suppressing treatment for six months before competing to be eligible.
Coe conceded there are no easy answers on this topic, which has turned into a societal lightning rod involving advocates who want people assigned female at birth to be able to compete on even footing and others who don’t want to discriminate against transgender and DSD athletes.
“All the decisions we’ve taken have their challenges,” Coe said. “If that’s the case, then we will do what we have done in the past, which is vigorously defend our position. And the overarching principle for me is we will always do what we think is in the best interest of our sport.”
Athletes with sex development differences, such as Semenya and Olympic 200-meter silver medalist Christine Mboma of Namibia, are not transgender, although the two issues share similarities when it comes to sports.
Such athletes were legally identified as female at birth but have a medical condition that leads to some male traits, including high levels of testosterone that World Athletics argues gives them the same kind of unfair advantage as transgender athletes.
Semenya has been running in longer events. She finished 13th in her qualifying heat at 5,000 meters at world championships last year. In a recent interview, she said she was aiming to run in the Olympics at a longer distance.
“I’m in the adaptation phase, and my body is starting to fit with it. I’m just enjoying myself at the moment, and things will fall into place at the right time,” the South African runner said.
Now, in order to compete at next year’s Olympics, she would have to undergo hormone-suppressing treatment for six months, something she has said she will never do again, having undergone the treatment a decade ago under previous rules.
Mboma, who won her silver in Tokyo two years ago but was out of worlds last year because of an injury, has not publicly stated whether she would be willing to undergo hormone therapy.
Another athlete, Olympic 800-meter silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, also has said she would not undergo treatment. While Semenya struggled at longer distances, Niyonsaba had relative success, winning Diamond League titles at 3,000 and 5,000 meters and running in the 5,000 at the Tokyo Olympics.
Under the new regulations, athletes in the previously “unrestricted” events would have to suppress testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per liter of blood for six months. Ultimately, they would have to stay below those levels for two years.
Previously, athletes with differences in sex development had to lower their testosterone to below 5 nanomoles per liter of blood for at least six months before competing, and the rules only applied to distances between 400 meters and the mile.
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