Coe targets Musk and Zuckerberg talks over ‘pond life’ abuse of female athletes

Sebastian Coe will demand urgent talks with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to stop “pond life” abusing female sports stars with impunity if he becomes International Olympic Committee president.

Speaking after a week in which Emma Raducanu spoke about not being able “see the ball through tears” after being approached by a stalker, and Eilish McColgan faced a blizzard of hate after posting a video of her running on social media, Lord Coe pledged to create a taskforce to find better ways to protect female athletes.

“It is vital that women feel that sport is a safe space,” he said. “You cannot have young athletes thinking the second you get public exposure that this comes at you like a waterfall of horror.”

Asked what he made of comments posted on Facebook, Instagram and X attacking women, the World Athletics president, who is among the favourites for the IOC presidential election on 20 March, replied: “It’s pond life. I’ve spoken to many female athletes about it. And some of the stuff that the American shot putter Raven Saunders told me made me want to cry. We’ve got to do more.”

Coe also promised he would deliver a blunt message to Zuckerberg, who is the chief executive of the Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, and Musk, who owns X, if he got the top job in global sports politics. “Come on, sort this out. Because this is just unacceptable. Sadly, it’s not new, but there’s just more of it. However, I think artificial intelligence actually can really help here in turbocharging some of this stuff out.”

Coe also questioned whether sportswashing was a valid term in the modern world, given that every country uses sport to promote its own interests, and said he would be happy for Saudi Arabia to bid for the 2040 Olympics.

“Let’s be open,” he said. “To a greater or lesser degree, everybody does that. You want to show the best of your country. They have 30-year strategies. And I think we sometimes overlook that. I first went to Qatar in the mid-90s, when they had a Junior World Cup in 1997.

“And some of those countries have got a much more coherent policy towards sport – and using it to create better opportunities for movement and young people – than other countries that are sitting there saying: ‘Oh well, it’s sportswashing,’ while watching school sport disappear and sport slowly drift off government agenda. So we have got to be a little more even-handed.”

Coe also insisted that he would be relaxed about Saudi Arabia hosting the Games in the autumn rather than summer, because it was inevitable that global warming would push future Olympics away from their traditional slot in July and August.

“By 2040 we’re going to have had a readjustment of the global calendar anyway,” he said. “And if you think about a World Athletics Championships, can we for very much longer ask athletes – even in Budapest or Paris – to be running in August? No, it doesn’t work.”

Coe pledged to work closely with Donald Trump before the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 if elected – and dismissed concerns that Trump’s behaviour might overshadow the Games. “I can’t believe that – like any other American president – he won’t want these Games to be a huge success,” he said. “And the Games are bigger than any individual. But it’s not a landscape that’s alien to me. The one thing about sport is you can have many more uncompromising conversations than jobbing ministers and politicians who don’t want to lose contracts going into countries.

“And the LA Games were opened in ’84 by Ronald Reagan. There wasn’t uniform deep joy about some of the things he was doing. Although looking back, I’m not sure Reagan would get the nomination for the Republican party now because he was far too liberal.”