World Athletics will defend its Russia ban in court as the IOC opens LA28 qualifying
Russian Athletics has filed a fresh claim at sport's arbitration court. Sebastian Coe says he will be there in person to defend a federation's right to set its own entry rules.
Russia's athletics federation has lodged a fresh claim at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, challenging the sanctions that have kept its athletes out of international competition since March 2022. World Athletics confirmed in July that the ban stays. Its president, Sebastian Coe, said this week that he intends to defend it in person.
"Well, I will be in the court of arbitration defending that position. That's how I feel about it," Coe told reporters at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham. Russian Athletics argues the restrictions are "selective and politicised" and prevent it from representing its athletes internationally.
The question in front of the panel is who writes the entry list
Coe framed the case not as a dispute about Russia but as a dispute about jurisdiction: "The primacy of an international federation to determine what eligibility looks like in your sport is the base of the pyramid. When we have been to the court before on previous occasions, that concept has been upheld." He added that World Athletics' position "is not about politics or passports" but about the integrity of competition.
That is the part with consequences well beyond one federation. Eligibility rules decide who appears on a start list, and a start list is the product every other contract in the sport is written against.
One Games, several different rulebooks
The dispute has surfaced now because the governing bodies of Olympic sport have stopped agreeing with each other. The International Olympic Committee has said Russian athletes will be able to compete in team events and qualifying competitions for the 2028 Los Angeles Games — its president, Kirsty Coventry, said the aim was to ensure all athletes could compete and "not be held responsible for their government's actions". World Gymnastics and the International Skating Union have also eased their restrictions.
World Athletics has not. So a single Olympic Games is now heading toward a field assembled under different entry rules sport by sport, with athletics holding the strictest line. Ukraine has called the IOC's decision premature.
Why an arbitration date matters to anyone running a qualifying event
Between now and 2028 the road to Los Angeles runs through hundreds of sanctioned meetings, championships and qualifying windows, each of them an event with an organiser, a host city, a broadcaster and an entry system. Those organisers need to know whose entries they will be processing, and in athletics that answer is now set by a tribunal rather than a calendar.
Coe has previously said that if a peace agreement is reached it is not for sport to stand in the way of a Russian return. Until then, the sport's biggest federation and the body that owns the Olympic Games are working to two different definitions of who is eligible to turn up.
