IOC, IAAF in Agreement

(ATR) IOC President Thomas Bach says his organization and the IAAF are "aligned in our approach in what sport needs for the future".

Bach made the comments in a news conference with IAAF President Sebastian Coe following a joint meeting of the IAAF Council and the IOC Executive Board in Doha, Qatar on Friday.

Issues discussed during the meeting, which ran long and was described as "very fruitful" by Bach, included maintaining or strengthening the relevance of sport among youth, the politicization of sport, and the approach to transgender and DSD (differences of sex development) athletes.

Bach says that the IOC is working on a framework for all international federations to use in dealing with the latter issue. Coe and the IAAF are at the forefront of the issue, winning a well-publicized legal battle with 2-time Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya over rules to restrict testosterone levels in female runners in certain track disciplines.

In his comments, Coe said the biggest challenge for both organizations is to maintain "an interest in what we are doing" and that working to achieve gender equality both on the playing field and within the IAAF’s governance structure is an important part of keeping the sport relevant.

Both bodies agreed that the politicization of sport is becoming more and more of a challenge for sports organizations.

"Keeping the universality of sport is a priority of our vision. In order to keep it, we need to keep strict neutrality. Only if we respect this neutrality can we expect politics to accept our mission of universality," the IOC President explained.

Coe added: "It is really important that sports organizations stay free from political interference. Autonomy is important for us."

During the meeting, the IAAF President updated the IOC EB about the situation of the Russian Athletics Federation, which has been suspended by the IAAF since 2015.

The IOC, on the other hand, has been much more lenient in its approach to the widespread Russian doping scandal from Sochi 2014. It left it to the federations to determine if Russian athletes could compete in Rio 2016. The IOC banned the Russian Olympic Committee from Pyeongchang 2018, but allowed its athletes to compete under the moniker "Olympic Athlete from Russia".

The IOC then reinstated Russia shortly after the end of the 2018 Olympics.

The IOC EB congratulated the IAAF on the good cooperation of its Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) with the International Testing Agency (ITA) in connection with the pre-testing program for Tokyo 2020.

"As you know, the IOC is very much interested in catching any cheats already before the Games," Bach said.

Bach began the news conference by congratulating Coe on unanimously winning a second term at the IAAF Congress on Wednesday. It is believed that Coe’s chances of becoming an IOC member could improve now that he has won another term.

Currently, there are two IOC members on the IAAF Council: Sergei Bubka as an IAAF Vice-President and Nawal El Moutawakel as an IAAF Council Member.

The IOC Executive Board will meet in Lausanne for two days beginning next Wednesday.

Written by Gerard Farek

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