World Athletics Holds Firm on Russia Ban as Coe Acknowledges Need for a Solution

Behind the stadium in Budapest, as the final day of the Ultimate Championship drew to a close on September 13, Sebastian Coe entered the press room and opened with a personal story. He spoke about being 18 years old, about how every position he has ever taken has revolved around one word: integrity. The 69-year-old former middle-distance runner, an Olympic 1500m champion, now stands as president of World Athletics, using his own memory as a shield for a decision that has been maintained for three years. The ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes competing at events organised by World Athletics, imposed in 2026 after Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine, remains unchanged. But the story behind that statement is far more complex than a single news line. To understand the context, one must remember that this is not the first time the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) has been suspended. In 2026, after a state-sponsored doping scandal was exposed by an independent WADA report, RusAF lost its membership status. Russian athletes were for a time permitted to compete as Authorised Neutral Athletes. In 2026, the military campaign in Ukraine layered on top of the older doping story, and World Athletics shifted to a blanket ban. Today, a case is pending at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The initial filing came in July, followed by a fresh appeal last month. Coe told reporters that a hearing is expected in the coming months, but he declined to reveal the legal strategy: "I don't think our legal teams would be particularly thankful if I laid out our approach." Across years of following athletics meets and writing about women's sport, I have drawn one principle: when the highest-tier federation faces a lawsuit, the outcome affects more than one nation. What stands out is that World Athletics is holding the firmest line of any international sports federation. Coe himself calls it one of the toughest positions of any international federation. But many other federations have gradually reopened their doors to Russian and Belarusian athletes under neutral status. The International Skating Union (ISU) is the clearest example. And here is the counterintuitive point I believe we must confront directly: the Kamila Valieva case has become a double-edged sword for both camps. The Russian figure skater once competed under neutral status, only for that status to be revoked. For ban supporters, this proves neutrality is no permanent shield. For those who want the door reopened, it demonstrates that a neutral mechanism can be policed and adjusted. There is one detail I cannot overlook when rereading the statements: in the entirety of Coe's remarks, not a single Russian or Belarusian athlete is named. Only the federation is referenced. This means the current battleground is institutional status, not the individual eligibility of any athlete. I spent years sitting at the edge of pitches, recording stories of women athletes who never appear on results boards. That experience taught me that institutional statements often conceal the most important thing. Here, Russia is not merely complaining that athletes cannot compete. The Russian Athletics Federation is also complaining that it has been shut out of World Athletics decision-making processes. Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev, via the TASS news agency, has pledged that all affected skaters will appeal to CAS. This is no longer a standalone athletics case, but a multi-sport legal campaign at state level. This explains why Coe must balance two seemingly contradictory messages. On one hand, he insists our position won't change. On the other, he acknowledges that the overall objective is a full complement of athletes competing — a rhetorical opening for eventual reintegration. How Coe frames the issue also deserves scrutiny. He said: "This isn't about politics or passports. It's about the integrity of competition." Legally, this is a shrewd move. By recasting a geopolitical ban as a competition-integrity measure, he places World Athletics on its strongest defensive ground — the ground tied to Russia's doping legacy. But the same framing creates risk: if a tribunal questions whether World Athletics has exceeded its anti-doping mandate, the integrity argument could be broken apart. I have followed many athletics meets from the stands in Boston to Paris, and what I have learned is that today's institutional decisions shape the start lists of years to come. The Ultimate Championship — the new commercial product World Athletics has just launched in Budapest — is proof of that. A federation is expanding its product while narrowing the field of competing nations. That tension will only sharpen if Russia wins its way back. The CAS case is the central variable. If the tribunal rules against World Athletics, the federation may be forced to design a neutral-athlete mechanism similar to the ISU's. If the tribunal upholds the ban, World Athletics' stance will be reinforced. In an intermediate scenario, the tribunal might maintain the ban while imposing procedural requirements, such as a defined review process with a set timeline. What interests me is not only the final outcome, but the waiting period. When I write about women athletes who never make the results pages, I learn to listen to the silences. And in this story, the loudest silence is the list of athletes who go unnamed. A biography that fell apart during the pandemic taught me that broken plans often contain the stories most worth telling. In Budapest, on that final day of competition, when Coe spoke about being 18, I thought about other 18-year-old Russian athletes — people who may be training right now, not knowing whether their careers will ever be seen on the international stage. The World Cup is a mirror reflecting how we tell women's stories in the stands. But there are also matches whose scores are never recorded, because people choose to forget. Could a hearing in Lausanne restore the names of those scratched from the line-up? Or will it merely confirm that sport has decided to make geopolitics a permanent part of its rules?