World Athletics president says transgender athlete policies must prioritize 'fairness' over 'inclusion'

• World Athletics president Sebastian Coe told Insider that transgender athlete policies must prioritize "fairness" over "inclusion."
• Coe said the current rules capping testosterone levels in female athletes are important because they uphold the "integrity of women's sports."

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe says when it comes to transgender athletes, he believes in prioritizing "fairness" over "inclusion."

"If you pushed me and you said if you had to make a choice between fairness or inclusion, I will always head towards fairness because that's what sports has to be based on," Coe told Insider.

Currently, World Athletics allows transgender women to compete if their testosterone levels fall below 5nmol/L for 12 months.

The testosterone levels for transgender and differences of sexual development (DSD) athletes was set by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Coe, calling himself "socially liberal" and unfazed by people's personal choices, said those rules were "important."

"The first principle is for me the integrity of women's sport," Coe said. "And if you don't protect that, then the risk is that you will lose female sport. And that is not something that I want to be presiding over."

Coe's comments came days before the start of the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. There, South African runner Caster Semenya will be participating in the 5,000 meter. Semenya is an intersex woman who won two Olympic medals in the 800 meters, but she had to change events after World Athletics' rules capped testosterone levels for events between the 400 meters and the mile. Semenya has made multiple appeals, but they have been unsuccessful.

"The science here is that testosterone is the key determinant in sporting performance," Coe told Insider.

"We do have two categories. We have an age category because we think it's better that athletes — you know, 14-year-old athletes aren't thrown in against Olympic champions in their 20s. And we have a gender category for the very simple reason that if you didn't, a woman would never win another sporting event. And that's something that flies in the face of common sense and the philosophy that we have adhered to at World Athletics."

Coe had made similar comments weeks ago after FINA, the ruling body for swimming, voted to restrict transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races if they had gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

"We see an international federation asserting its primacy in setting rules, regulations and policies that are in the best interest of its sport," Coe told BBC Sport.

"This is as it should be. We have always believed that biology trumps gender, and we will continue to review our regulations in line with this. We will follow the science."