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World Athletics chief Coe immovable on reinstating Russia to int'l competition

"We need to come to terms, somehow, some way we need to move in this direction, we can't remain sidelined forever, it’s not right," Sergey Shubenkov said

MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. World Athletics President Sebastian Coe appears unwilling to budge in his stance against bringing Russian track and field athletes back to international competition, Russia’s 2015 World Champion in the 110m hurdles Sergey Shubenkov told TASS on Friday.

Chairman of the All-Russia Athletics Federation (RusAF) Pyotr Fradkov stated earlier that reinstating Russia’s track and field athletes internationally was a priority for RusAF and that the federation has been taking steps to expedite this process, but to no avail.

"I don’t think it’s realistic to negotiate our return with Coe," Shubenkov said in an interview with TASS. "I believe we’ll have to wait for someone else to take over [World Athletics], if and when that happens."

"We need to come to terms, somehow, some way we need to move in this direction, we can't remain sidelined forever, it’s not right," he continued. "I understand RusAF’s stance, and it is the correct one."

"Something certainly needs to be done, but I don't even know where to begin or what common ground to look for. Perhaps enormous finances need to be raised," Shubenkov noted. "But how much have we already poured into World Athletics, and what do we have to show for it?"

Coe, 68, is running for International Olympic Committee (IOC) president. If he is elected the IOC president, Coe will have to resign from his post as the president of the world’s governing body of track and field athletics.

Seven candidates will vie for the IOC presidency at the organization’s 144th session in Greece between March 18 and 21.

The candidates are Sebastian Coe (Great Britain), Juan Antonio Samaranch (Spain), Morinari Watanabe (Japan), Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe), David Lappartient (France), Johan Eliasch (Great Britain) and Prince Faisal bin Hussein (Jordan).

Current President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach announced last August that he would not run for another presidential term in the world’s governing Olympic body.

Russia’s national track and field athletes were barred from international competitions in March 2022 in view of the developments in Ukraine. In 2017, Russian athletes were stripped of their right to compete internationally under the national flag and to the tune of the country’s anthem. They skipped the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, except for long jumper Daria Klishina, who resided and practiced in the United States at that time.

At a World Athletics Board meeting, hosted by Monaco on December 7-8, 2023, Coe told journalists that no track and field athletes from Russia and Belarus would be permitted to take part in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.

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