Lord Sebastian Coe open to moving summer sports to winter Olympics

World Athletics chief Lord Coe says he would be open to the possibility of moving some indoor sports from the summer Olympics to the winter Games if he becomes the new president of the International Olympic Committee.

Britain’s two-time Olympic 1500m champion published his manifesto, external on Thursday morning alongside those of the other six candidates in the running to succeed Thomas Bach next year.

“Innovation is critical, we have to be open to new ideas,” he told BBC Sport.

Coe has vowed to shake up the IOC, claiming “too much power is in the hands of too few people”.

Describing the election as “the dance I just couldn’t sit out”, Coe said: “The question I ask myself as a member is – ‘what input do I and other members have?’

“And the reality of it is, there isn’t enough. I’m not sure we’re making the most of the extraordinary talent that sits alongside me. The IOC is not a broken organisation but it can be so much better and it needs change.”

In his proposals, Coe reinforces previous pledges to boost youth sport, introduce “clear, science-based policies” to protect the female category amid continuing debate in sport over gender eligibility rules, and to listen to athletes.

He also says that: “To sustain the Games we must grow – not just financially but also in reach and relevance. Commercial partners and broadcasters want modernisation.”

Speaking at the Olympic Park in Stratford, Coe – who chaired the organising committee of London 2012 – added: “Climate change is going to fundamentally make us have to think about the global calendar, where we take our events and the times of the year that we take our events.

“And some people have even suggested that we might want to look at the balance between the winter and summer Games.

“You have venues where some sports are indoors. You could in theory take them into another time of the year, maybe a winter Games.

“So these are all the things that I would encourage debate to take place on, because only when we have that debate can we discard the things that may not work.

“Only in collaboration with the winter sports and all those organisations out there. We have the Association of National Olympic Committees. We have the summer federations that are represented, and some of that has to be a collaborative approach. But I think we should always be open to new and fresh thinking.”

Last year the IOC said research showed only 10 countries will be able to host snow sports by 2040 because of the impact of climate change, and accepted “a need to adapt the Olympic Winter Games”.

There are currently four indoor sports at the Winter Olympics: speed skating, figure skating, curling, and ice hockey.

In a controversial move, World Athletics introduced prize money for gold medallists at Paris 2024 under Coe’s leadership.

“Many of the things I’ve done at World Athletics have sparked a debate,” he said.

“That’s not something I shy away from. In a world that changes every five minutes, we have to be very open to analysis that doesn’t always fit comfortably with how we see the world. And we should embrace that.”

Coe vowed to avoid a repeat of this summer’s Olympic boxing controversy when two athletes disqualified from the previous year’s World Championships for allegedly failing gender eligibility criteria – Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting – won gold medals after being allowed to compete by the IOC. Both have insisted they are women.

“On the female category, it was non-negotiable [to include it in the manifesto],” Coe said.

“If you don’t have clear policies, you end up with where you got to in Paris. The comforting thing for me is that it could not have happened in athletics.”

Under Coe, World Athletics has banned transgender women from competing in the female category at international events and toughened the rules over the participation of competitors with differences in sex development (DSD).