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Feb. 20, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:15:04
20250220_trump-bans-trans-athletes-riley-gaines-vs-blossom-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump Vindicated on Trans Issues 00:09:05
I think Donald Trump should stop booty clapping to Elon Musk and actually get something done in this country.
And eradicating trans people is not going to be it.
We all felt betrayed.
We all felt violated in the locker room.
Riley is just a tremendous athlete and it was a very unfair situation.
And to have a president who's willing to listen to us feel entirely vindicated.
There are only two genders, male and female.
Donald Trump is a complete morbon.
Trans people exist.
There are more than two sexes.
Blossom, should we combine the Paralympics with the regular Olympics?
Have them all compete with each other?
We talk about trans people.
We're talking about gender identity.
I need both of y'all mindset to be more expansive.
Right.
I know that's a little hard for you.
Can you answer my question?
I think what you're saying is conservative propaganda.
I think what you're saying is y'all.
Can you answer my question?
I mean, why not?
And to go back to Riley's point of view.
Oh my gosh.
You are completely insane.
It takes one to know one.
People like Blossom are exactly why Donald Trump won.
For me, this is absolutely about the integrity of competition.
It seems completely insane to me.
When it comes to the biology of sport, it is very, very clear-cut.
President Trump has banned trans athletes from women's sport.
With the Olympic Games heading for Los Angeles, comply or defy.
Ladies, we'll bring you my exclusive interview with Lord Sebastian Coe, who could be the next Olympics president and effectively the top boss in world sport.
And he knows all about Olympics because he was an Olympic champion himself.
But we begin with this.
It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
But all of that ends today because with this executive order, the war on women's sports is over.
Well, the New York Times calls us a shameful campaign against transgender Americans.
Well, NPR warns of extremism with chilling echoes in history.
Trump is facing a slew of legal challenges to the trans ban, but so far it's getting results anyway.
The NCAA, which enabled the whole Leah Thomas fast, has reversed a 15-year policy and will ban transgender women from women's sports.
Athlete Cece Telfa, a mediocre male runner who transitioned to become a record-breaking female runner, said this.
They would be smart and educated enough to know that something like that is not, that's not how history works and that's not how the direction of progressiveness works and you can't take you can't take back history.
Well, I responded on X by calling the interview absurd, adding that she was born male, looks and speaks like a man, runs like a man, and is smashing women's records.
She's not a victim.
She's a cheat.
Well, athlete Riley gains at a chorus of conservative criticism, but also rebuked me for not referring to Telfa as he.
Now, look, here's where I feel about this.
I've got no problem with calling a trans woman she.
I only have a problem when I believe they are deliberately trying to erode women's rights to fairness, equality, and safety.
And I think that's my dividing line.
And so really, is it the hill to die on as to whether we call C.C. Telfa he or she?
I don't think so.
But Riley will explain herself when it comes to this.
Others have pointed out that CeCe Telfa has no respect for women whose sporting dreams she's shattered.
That's an interesting part of his debate too.
And it's a sign of a massive cultural shift that using the wrong pronouns, previously a fully cancelable offense, is suddenly perfectly normal and no one's getting cancelled for it.
So has Trump's trans ban unleashed a new wave of misery for trans people everywhere, as some claim, or is he simply restoring much-needed common sense in a way that, frankly, most voters fully agree with.
But joining me to debate all this is Blossom C. Brown, a transgender activist who sparred with Michael Knowles on Jubilee this week.
Hi, Blossom.
She her hers powerhouse.
The Blossom Powerhouse.
Lovely to meet you.
And the great Riley Gaines, who's been a fantastic trailblazer for safeguarding women's rights and all this, is the host of Gaines for Girls on Outkick.
You had a front row seat, Riley, at the White House when the president signed that executive order, which was quite a moment.
First of all, how did you feel being there for that moment in history, which you've campaigned so hard for?
Well, thank you, Pierce, for having me on.
Always a joy to be on with you.
There were a lot of emotions.
Of course, it's a bit bewildering that this is something that's necessary, that a sitting president has to take time out of his day, out of his busy day, to use his executive powers to declare, number one, that men and women are different, and then to further declare that men do not belong in women's sports.
But nonetheless, it is necessary.
I would argue that it was urgent.
So, this type of moral clarity and decisiveness is, I just feel vindicated.
The past three years, me personally, and I know women who have been fighting much longer than I have.
The past three years, it's been an uphill battle.
Not only were we as women, as female athletes, I guess in particular, not only were we ignored and stonewalled, we were actually reprimanded if we dared to oppose this movement.
If we dared to even question this movement, we as women were reprimanded.
So, to now to finally have a seat at the table and to have a president who is willing to listen to us, I just feel grateful.
I feel grateful for God's mercy that we don't deserve, and I feel entirely vindicated.
I think that visual, quickly, that visual of President Trump surrounded by all of these young girls, girls with dreams and aspirations and hopes for a future.
I think that visual is one of the most iconic pictures that will come out of his administration.
And that's saying a lot considering this man has a mugshot.
Yeah, I mean, the two images I'll be remembering from all that involving you were you with Trump when that happened, but also you being mobbed literally in a vicious, horrible, threatening way by a gang of people wanting to cause you physically harm because you were standing up for women's rights, not least for safety, which seemed to me completely outrageous.
Blossom, I can see you making faces there.
I've got one question to start this debate with you: why do we separate the sexes at the Olympics?
You know, first of all, I want to say shout out to Cece Tolfer.
I've met her before.
She is a magnificent person, and she is very bad ASS, and I love her to death.
Let me say this.
We'll come to CeCe Telford in a moment.
Cece Telver might be a fabulous person.
I'm going to come later to why I think what she does is completely wrong.
But just on the question I asked, why do we separate the sexes at the Olympics?
If you actually, well, Piers, if you actually let me get to it, because you let Riley have her talking points, I'm going to actually have my talking points now.
Cece is definitely a wonderful person.
And I think, let's be clear, Donald Trump is a complete moron.
Donald Trump talks so much about waste and fraud, and you're signing a whole executive order banning trans women from playing sports.
According to the NCAA, there are over 510,000 athletes.
And within those athletes, there are only less than 10 trans athletes.
So you mean to tell me Donald Trump signed an executive order for 0.002 of the population when trans people are only 1%?
That's a waste.
That is a waste.
Trans people exist.
There are more than two sexes.
There are intersex people that exist.
And I think that it's nothing more than conservative propaganda that because Donald Trump is in power, he is able to use.
I think Donald Trump should stop booty clapping to Elon Musk and actually get something done in this country.
And eradicating trans people is not going to be it.
And I stand 10 toes down on that.
Okay, so I'll say very briefly, it's this argument that it's a small percentage of the population.
I hope you realize it's not a one-to-one ratio.
It's not for every one male that's participating in a woman's sport, it's one woman that's affected.
In my sport, at our national championships, one male displaced 14,000 women.
And I can speak for myself.
I can speak for my teammates.
I can speak for 99% of other female competitors on that pool deck.
We all felt betrayed.
We all felt violated in the locker room.
We all felt it was unfair, but not enough people were courageous enough to say it because they were terrified.
They were terrified of the name-calling that you just pursued.
Even, I mean, the first thing you say is Donald Trump is a moron.
What 20-year-old girl wants to be called transphobic or any of the slurs that have been thrown my way?
I can certainly attest to Piers of the Commission.
No, Riley, I think you're just trying to make it seem like that trans people are a threat to cis women in the breastroom.
And that's not the case.
Trans women and cis women should be coming together.
Trans women are not a threat to cis women.
Okay, but here's it's a look.
Blossom, blossom.
I appreciate that y'all have ran on that ideology.
You have ran on that ideology.
Blossom, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Sharon Osborne Race Card Play 00:09:01
And you're going to have to specifically tell me cases.
Blossom.
Specifically tell me cases of trans women have hurt cis women in the restroom.
I like to know that.
Blossom, we don't use things like words like cis on here because no one understands it.
Let's just.
Well, I use cisgender, so that's why I'm sure you do, but nobody's my vocabulary.
Yeah, but nobody else understands it.
Let's just stick to my question.
My question for you, which you have to do is understand.
You just have to have the intellectual capacity.
Blossom.
You don't have the intellectual capacity to understand.
Blossom, just to explain something.
You're appearing on a show called Piers Morgan Uncensored.
That means you can say whatever you want.
I know all about you, Piers.
Okay, you can take it.
And I know how you're good at race baiting.
I know how you're going to be transphobic.
And that's why I'm here to face you to face you one-on-one.
When do you think I've ever race baited?
Honey, you remember that whole incident with Sharon Osborne?
Yes.
Let's not forget.
Oh, you know, I do.
Oh, no, I do.
We're not here to talk about Ms. Sharon Osborne.
No, what do you think happened to you?
We're not here to talk about Ms. Sharon Osborne.
Yes, what do you think?
We're here to talk about trans people in sports.
Hang on, you've raised it.
You are notorious.
Okay, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Let's have a conversation.
Let's have a conversation.
Let's talk about the Sharon Osborne thing.
Let me tell you what.
Since you've raised it.
Since you've raised it.
I am a black transport.
Oh, Blossom, stop talking for a moment.
I've answered so many times since I've been here.
Blossom.
Can we have a conversation, please?
The white girl all the time.
Can we have a conversation?
And a black girl is having to stop.
Actually, at the moment, the black girl is doing all the talking.
Hang on, hang on.
What in the world was going to be?
Can I just say something, please?
That's my view.
Blossom, stop talking.
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Now on with the show.
Let me just explain to you why what you've just said is complete and utter nonsense.
I'm very glad you raised the Sharon Osborne thing, as you put it.
Just to remind people and you and educate you about what happened.
I was removed from my job hosting a morning show in Britain called Good Morning Britain because I disbelieved Megan Markle's claims of racism against the royal family.
Okay?
I never said a racist.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me finish.
I never said a racist thing about anybody, least of all Meghan Markle.
I've never invoked her skin color.
In fact, on the day she got married to Prince Harry, I wrote a front page story in a national newspaper in this country in which I extolled the glorious moment we finally had a biracial wedding in our otherwise all-white royal family.
You might be bored, but I'm going to address your allegation.
But hang on.
I haven't finished.
I haven't finished.
I haven't finished, Blossom.
Let me finish.
Let me just educate you.
Well, I didn't get to finish this.
Let me just educate you with some facts.
You've called me a racebaiter.
You've called me a race.
Please stop talking.
You've called me a racebaiter.
Allegedly.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Right.
So let me finish.
So what happened then was Sharon Osborne, who was on a show called The Talk on CBS, now sadly no longer there because they got rid of Sharon.
And guess what?
Nobody wanted to watch it.
And Sheryl Underwood, a black woman on that panel, set up Sharon Osborne in the most despicable manner imaginable.
And she said to Sharon Osborne, why did you support Piers Morgan when he said those racist things?
Of course you will.
And Sharon Osborne, hang on.
You can respond when I finish telling you what happened.
You can respond when I tell you what happened.
I just want you to know you are.
Blossom.
You can respond.
You can respond when I finished telling you what happened.
And you can challenge me on facts.
What you can't challenge me is something you've seen on TikTok.
So let me finish.
So Sharon Osborne was told, why did...
Nobody said that on TikTok.
Someone's going to be aware of that.
Cheryl Underwood said to Sharon Osborne, okay, if you're going to keep talking, I'll mute you.
I will mute you, but don't let me mute you.
Let me just finish.
Then you can respond.
Sheryl Underwood said, why did you support Piers Morgan when he said those racist things?
Sharon said, what racist things?
And as a result of that, by getting annoyed that she was being set up to try and supposedly defend her friend me in saying racist things I'd never said, Sharon got fired from the talk and she was left suicidal in the year that followed.
Her whole career was sent down the drain because ironically, the race baiter was actually the black woman on that panel, Cheryl Underwood, not Sharon Osborne and not me.
So I'm very glad you raised the issue of race baiting, but let's be clear.
As you're doing now, the race baiting came from Cheryl Underwood to Sharon Osborne and it's now coming from you.
So now you can respond.
I cannot be racist, Piers.
Now you can respond.
Black women cannot be racist to white women.
Are you kidding me?
Sorry?
That makes no sense.
Sorry?
Black women cannot be racist to white women.
Do you not understand?
Oh, yes, they can.
You don't have the intellectuals.
Oh, yes, they can.
To understand that.
Oh, yes, they can.
And you've been racist to me.
That's very much a problem.
You've been racist to me, a white man, by saying I'm a racebaiter.
Yeah.
How am I racist to you?
I'm black.
I can't be racist.
You call me a race baiter with no evidence.
When have I been a racebaiter?
You could be racist to me.
When have I been a race baiter?
I'm a powerhouse.
Tell me when I've been a racebaiter.
Well, you may be a powerhouse.
You may be a power.
You may be a powerhouse.
When have I been a racebaiter?
I'm going to admit that.
When have I been a race beta?
Okay.
When have I been a race beta?
Okay.
This is absurd.
No, hang on.
Tell me.
Blossom.
Give me one example of me racebaiting.
Blossom, go.
I'm here.
At this point, I'm just here to talk about trans women in sports.
I said what I said.
So you don't have anything, do you?
You called me a race baiter, but you have no evidence I've ever race baited.
You admit it.
Do you believe that African Americans are superior to fascinating?
Like so many people, you play that race card and you can't defend it.
You can't support it.
There is no evidence.
It's not hard on.
Let me check you on that.
Let me check you all day.
You talk about this race car or whatnot.
The race card is reality.
My experience as a black trans woman is probably defending your experience.
Reality.
Well, let me ask you about reality then.
Do not interrupt a black trans woman when I'm speaking.
Oh, don't be so scared.
Do not interrupt a black trans woman when I'm speaking.
Riley since so much purpose.
So you can interrupt me for the last 10 minutes.
So just to be clear, just to be clear.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Just to be clear, Blossom.
White tears about transparency.
All right, just can you mute Blossom for a moment, please?
Thank you.
Hang on, Riley.
Sort of make the point that Blossom has just literally interrupted me for 10 consecutive minutes without pausing breath.
But the moment Riley has the audacity to interrupt Blossom, oh, guess what?
That's the moment that the black transgender woman decides this is outrageous.
Okay, you can unmute her now.
This feels like an SNL skit.
This feels like an SNL skit.
It does.
Okay.
It's preposterous.
Because I just want you to remember that Blossom said what she, her basis and perspective of life is rooted in reality.
So please remember that as we continue this conversation.
Which brings me to my question, which you haven't answered, Blossom, which is why do we separate the sexes in the Olympics?
Why Separate Olympic Sexes 00:02:48
Here's the thing.
I'm not an Olympian.
Oh.
I don't play sports.
You don't know why we separate Oxygen?
I think what you're saying is conservative propaganda.
Propaganda.
What you're saying is conservative propaganda.
Conservative propaganda.
I asked you why we separate.
I asked you why we separate the sexes.
Why do we separate the sexes?
Again.
Why do we have to transform it?
Again, when we talk about trans people, when we talk about trans people, we're talking about gender identity.
And I need both of y'all mindset to become more expansive.
I know that's a little hard for you.
Can you answer my question?
Because both of you have to question it.
I understand that's hard for both of y'all.
Can you answer my question?
Can you answer my question?
Again.
Again, when we talk about trans people, we're talking about gender identity.
We're not just sex.
That's not my question.
What y'all like to do is reduce conversations down to sex.
What you all like to do.
And you try to apply it to what's happening in the Olympics.
Okay.
And I'm asking you a very inspiring trans women shall participate in the Olympics, the next Olympics, the next Olympic spreading misinformation.
I don't want to have to mute you again.
Conservative propaganda should not be.
Okay.
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Scanning QR for ExpressVPN 00:10:28
Now, on with the show.
The next Olympics will be in America in Los Angeles.
I'll ask you one more time: why do we separate the sexes in the Olympics?
Why do we have men and women competing separately?
Give me an answer.
Well, Piers, why don't you tell me the answer?
Says, I don't know.
You don't know the answer?
Oh, Riley's got a hand up.
Riley, I don't know.
Riley, why don't you educate her?
Why don't you educate both of you?
I don't know.
Riley, why do we separate the sexes in the Olympics?
Because men and women are different.
We have different physical ceilings.
It's the same reason why you have any category.
It's the same reason why we have the Paralympics versus the Olympics.
It's the same reason why we have weight classes in boxing.
We don't have weight classes in boxing because we are fat-shaming people who weigh more.
No, we have weight classes because it would be unfair.
We know the outcome.
Every single person, kindergartners, know the outcome of what would happen if we had a 220-pound man fight a 170-pound man.
It's the same reason why we have age divisions.
We don't have 12 and unders or PV leaves.
We don't know that.
What if that woman's 220-pound?
Wait, wait, wait.
What if that 170-pound man has the agility to beat that 220-pound man?
That makes no sense.
So you want to base all of the Olympics off of acceptance.
Your answer makes no sense.
That makes no sense.
Y'all don't know.
Bottom line, it doesn't make biochemistry.
It makes sense.
You do not know.
No, Riley.
I'm sorry.
You absolutely do not know about somebody's biology.
You just admitted you're not biochemistry.
You have never competed at the media level game.
And I have to say, I don't have to be an athlete to talk about this because this applies to the same thing.
But you just said you couldn't answer because you're not Olympic.
No, you know what we're going to try.
Why don't we try to get away from it?
Can we please stop talking at the same time?
If you talk at the same time, Blossom.
Blossom.
If you talk at the same time, nobody can hear either of you.
Okay?
So, Blossom, let's start with you again.
A simple question.
I'll tell you why they separate the sexes, just as Riley has.
It's because men have a physical advantage over women, which would mean that women would not win more than a handful of medals in the entire Olympics.
Would you be happy if it was a gender-neutral Olympic?
Hang on.
Answer my question.
Women are just as strong as men.
I'm asking you.
I'm sorry.
Women are just as strong as men.
So just to be clear.
Powerful men.
I don't believe that.
Okay, Blossom.
That's just your opinion.
So Blossom.
Blossom, if the world's number one tennis player.
I don't buy it.
Okay, you know that Serena Williams admits that she would be beaten by the top thousand men in the world at tennis, right?
You know that.
Do you?
No, I don't know.
You did not know that.
He doesn't know why men and women disappear.
I would like to read those receipts.
Both Serena and Venus Williams lost.
Are you waving them?
Are you waving them around?
What?
You can look it up to the 203rd ranked male player.
He drank in between sets, smoked in between sets, and played 18 holes of golf before and admitted that he played like a 600 male ranked player.
And they lost in a blowout, and they are phenomens, the best of the best.
No other woman for a while even could come close to them.
And they got beat by a man.
Let me repeat it.
In a blowout, the 203rd ranked male player who admitted he played like a 600-ranked player.
Spoke between sets and played 18 holes of golf.
Blossom, Blossom, just to be clear, would you want the American Olympics, the LA Olympics?
Would you want them to be gender-neutral where the sexes compete with each other?
Absolutely.
I don't see anything wrong with it.
I think long as you can.
Do you also believe that men and non-binary men?
Yes.
Why not?
It's completely insane.
This country was built on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Exactly.
This is why that's so nice.
That does include cis women like you know what you would do?
You would exclude all women from winning medals.
Hold on.
That's not true.
That's not true.
That is not true.
Can we talk about Leah Thomas?
Now, I bring up Leah Thomas because Riley knows her very well.
I bring up Leah Thomas because the reality is, yes, she won some games, but Leah also lost some games to cis women.
So there are some cis women who are faster than Leah.
There are some cis women who are stronger than Leah.
And again, when we talk about genetics, there are some cis women that have natural higher testosterone levels than trans women.
That's why some of them may look more masculine.
Iman Khalif had to experience that transphobia.
Which, by the way, transphobia affects all women.
And now that Trump has excluded trans women from playing in sports, all women are going to be subjected to rigorous tests to make sure that they're not trans.
And that does include cis women.
I don't care how feminine they look.
You could potentially be subjected to these rigorous tests because Donald Trump took his peanut head red orange behind and signed an executive order that he doesn't even know anything about.
He's a convicted felon, 34 felonies, right?
We also need to be focusing on letting convicted felons in this country vote since we elected a convicted felon, right?
There's so much more work.
The economy is tanking here.
All right, Riley.
Gas prices are high.
Okay.
Why is Trump focused so much on trans people?
Because he wants to preserve the integrity.
Guess what?
I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why, Blossom.
Because he's up again.
I'll tell you why, Blossom.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on, Riley.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Blossom, here's why.
Because he's up against complete lunatics like you who think it would be right to have a gender-neutral Olympics.
A gender-neutral Olympics is the most insane thing I've ever heard from any trans activist in history.
Luna is exactly why you haven't met me.
You haven't found out until you met me.
I'm not your average trans woman.
In case you didn't know, Donald Trump.
I'm not your average trans woman.
Riley.
People like Blossom are exactly why Donald Trump won on November 5th.
People, I believe.
Oh, girl, please.
Girl, please.
Donald Trump win the election, which is why he's sitting in office now.
Can we mute him?
Mute Blossom, please, because you can't stop talking.
Riley, you respond.
People turned out, I believe, in masses to the polls on November 5th to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace the America First Agenda, to embrace his cabinet picks.
But more so, I believe people turned up to the polls to reject absurdity.
And that is exactly what the past 30 minutes have been on this program, Pierce, is totally, entirely, and thoroughly absurd from top to bottom.
Saying there should be a gender-neutral Olympics.
Are you serious?
Do you also believe, Blossom, that we should combine the Paralympics and the Olympics?
I would love to hear an answer to that.
Okay, I'll ask you.
Bring back Blossom.
Blossom, should we combine the Paralympics with the regular Olympics?
Have them all compete with each other?
I mean, why not?
And to go back to Riley's point.
You are completely insane.
Come on, my last point.
No, but no Paralympian would win a medal.
So no Paralympian would win a medal.
So your diversity, equity, and inclusion turns out to be unequal.
They're not going to win the polls because they want prices to come down.
People went to the polls.
They went to the polls to vote because they had every right to.
Yeah, and they voted for Donald Trump.
You know why they voted for Donald Trump?
Because people like you have turned this debate into the world.
Donald Trump rigged that election.
Donald Trump does not even have the capacity to even run.
Mute Blossom one more time because I want to thank Riley.
Thank you, Blossom.
Riley, thank you for engaging in this and the best way you could have done.
I think when we have somebody who with a straight face says that the answer to this debate is that we have a gender neutral Olympics and we allow Paralympics and the Olympics to morph into one event and says this is about DIE when in fact what it does is it removes any equality for Paralympians or women.
So no disabled people competing would ever win and then women wouldn't win either more than about two or three medals because we all know that's why they separate the sexes.
If that is DIE at work, that is why DIE has been a travesty.
DEI, I'm sorry.
It would be a travesty.
So Riley, thank you.
Congratulations on getting this over the line.
Hopefully we'll bring some sanity and equality and inclusion back to sport, which is what we want.
Bring back Blossom.
Blossom?
Blossom, what are you?
I'm done saying DIE is DEI.
I know, I corrected myself.
I corrected myself.
The whole thing is absurd, whichever way you want to put the letters.
I just can't get over that he said he's rooted in reality.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, but Blossom.
Girl, Shed Show, but Miss Thing, Miss Tommy Lauren-looking girl.
Go on.
Miss Tommy Larry looking girl.
I'm glad to have Tommy Larry on the show.
Tommy Lauren reject going over there somewhere.
Ad hominem.
That's all the left here have violence and then Pierce.
Miss Thinge's petty personality.
Going over there and advocating.
Every single trans activist look bad.
You do.
Every single one of them.
You know what?
I do.
You make them all repair.
I'm a girl myself.
I represent myself.
And what I'm doing is facing off with fascist and racist on live fair.
And I'm paying back.
Fascist, racist, fascinating.
I spout on Pierce's show.
I understand what I said.
Fabulous.
I can say, Blossom, I do want to congratulate you.
Seriously, Blossom, you have been, without a shadow of a doubt, the maddest trans activist I've ever had on the show.
Congratulations.
Riley, thank you very much.
Thank you, Blossom.
Gender Must Not Override Biology 00:15:33
That's it.
I'm going to go and have a cold shower and calm down.
Well, Laura Sebastian Coe is a double Olympic gold medalist, one of the finest runners in sporting history, and now one of the most important figures in world sport.
He's currently top dog at world athletics and he's in the running to be president of the International Olympic Committee.
Most importantly of all, of course, he's here live on Uncensored.
Great to see you.
It's better than the alternative.
It's fascinating time to interview you because you're one of about, I think, the seven candidates to potentially run the IOC at a critical moment, many people think.
It's not the most exclusive club.
No, no.
I mean, first of all, why do you want to do this?
It's everything I've ever done.
I mean, I'm trying hard not to sound too cliched, but I've spent my whole life in the Olympic movement.
From the age of 11, when my old man bought me my first pair of running shoes, joined an athletics club in Sheffield, and everything went.
I try not to overcomplicate things.
I'm sitting here because I started life as a pavement pounder.
I'm a runner.
And everything else has flowed from that.
And I have a passion for this.
And it's because I genuinely think I can make a difference.
I think you can, because I think some of the things you've done in your current job, in my opinion, are essential for preserving the integrity of sport.
And let's start with what I think is probably one of the most contentious things in world sport right now, which is this whole issue of trans athletes in women's sport.
Donald Trump has come into office and immediately gone right.
There's a ban.
We're not going to have in America trans athletes in women's sport.
The immediate consequence of that is, of course, you've got the Olympics coming to Los Angeles, and he's made it clear that trans athletes will not be allowed into America if they intend to compete, which means they won't be able to compete in the Olympics as far as he's concerned, because they won't get in past the border.
First of all, what is your reaction to the moves he's made?
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I welcome the commitment to maintaining the integrity of women's sport.
And for me, this is absolutely about the integrity of competition.
I am by nature a social liberal.
I really do not choose, nor do I have any predisposition to tell people how to live their lives.
But when it comes to the biology of sport, it is very, very clear-cut.
And actually, I'm surprised that it has been as contentious a discussion as it has become.
It seems completely insane to me.
I mean, I'm thinking about in 20, 30 years' time, I'm convinced we're going to look back on this period and think everybody went completely nuts because there's a reason at the Olympics that we separate the sexes.
If we didn't, women would barely win a medal.
Well, you would lose women's sport.
Right.
It would be destroyed.
It is as simple as that.
And I was confronted with this issue.
I don't want to get into the weeds, but there are two quite distinct issues that at World Athletics we had to deal with.
One was something called DSD, which is a male biology, and the other is transgender.
And look, I'm not oblivious to the trauma that people go through if they do transition.
I absolutely respect that.
We have a working group at World Athletics looking at this and maintaining a watching view on changing science and the politics of this.
We also have a transgender athlete on that commission.
But when it comes to the female category in elite sport, it has to be sacrosanct.
And the reason I think it's so important is that you cannot have young girls coming into the sport and sensing or feeling that at any stage there is a glass ceiling to their ability to perform at the very highest level.
And you cannot have, you just simply cannot have this lack of clarity.
So World Athletics, we were very clear.
We followed the science and that is critical.
I think we've used language that is moderate.
You know, we're not rabid here.
And when I discuss this, I tend to always pull myself up short and say, I have two daughters.
How would I feel if they were being discussed at this moment?
So it's really important that we use language that is moderate.
But for me, this is sacrosanct.
What I don't like about the whole debate, and I haven't done from the start, is that anyone that...
I think my political leanings are probably not dissimilar to yours, right?
I mean, I've always been a pretty liberal guy.
Middle of the road.
Yeah, exactly.
And I've really resented the fact that if you try and defend women's rights to fairness and equality and safety, actually, you get, you have been until now.
It's changing quite quickly.
But you get branded instantly transphobic as if somehow you're anti-trans people.
It's a really interesting point you make.
Funnily enough, when we made the decision, and this wasn't a unilateral decision, I have a council.
I have 26 people on my council, male and female.
I've got an executive board.
We have a health and science team.
But actually, when we made the decision and we went out and properly articulated what our concerns were, we didn't end up in that landscape because we were very clear and we showed a lead.
We took a lead here.
And some other international federations, I'm very pleased, have followed in the same way.
I don't condemn those that haven't because I can't sit here assuming that everybody's going to see the world the way I do.
You're seeing it scientifically and biologically.
I mean, there's a factual element to what you're doing.
I think the other bodies who haven't taken action yet are just putting their head in the sand, hoping this all blows over.
They haven't got to do anything.
Which is actually, it's a form of moral cowardice.
It's the worst position to be in here is where you have lack of clarity.
You have to have clarity here because, you know, the world of sport needs a lead here.
And we've thought about this long and hard.
And it really does come down to the integrity.
You know, if you have the integrity of sport absolutely at the heart of every decision you make and the welfare of the athletes at the heart of every decision you make, you won't go far wrong.
And that's really, those have been my two guiding pillars.
If I let that go, then I've lost the integrity of the sport for women.
And I'm just not prepared to do that.
I mean, if you at your peak, and I was in my late teens when you and Steve Overtip and Steve Cram had your magnificent battles and instill great pride in the country with your tremendous wins.
But if you had decided at the time, right, I'm going to now identify as a woman, and the only criteria was that you just had to reduce your testosterone level, for example, which is the argument some people give.
You've still got the physiology that you were given as a biological man.
Therefore, you would have completely dominated women's sport to a degree that you would have broken the records, which could then never be broken again by an actual biological woman.
That's always been my thing about it.
You would also have deprived a biological woman, but a woman, let's call them, they're not biological women, they're women.
You would have deprived a woman of a place in an Olympic team, a world championship team, because you're taking it and you would have won everything, right?
That to me, right there, is the problem.
Piers, I could actually repeat word for word what you've just said.
I don't actually dissent from any of it.
The challenge we've got is that we need to communicate this.
We need to communicate it liberally.
And we need to communicate it in language that is not rabid.
It is follow the science.
Have you thought about that?
And for me, it's really clear.
Gender must not override biology.
Because if you do, then you're into a really dangerous landscape.
Have you thought about what happens to trans athletes?
In other words, you know, I want trans people to have the same rights to fairness, equality, and safety as I want for women and for men.
And the right to compete in sport.
And it seems to me there's only one of two ways that this gets resolved where they can continue to compete.
You either have a new category for trans athletes, and it doesn't work with the other way around, with the trans men, because obviously they don't have the biological advantage.
But for trans women, of whom there are an increasing number identifying as trans women, they either compete in a new category or they compete against their biological sex, it seems to me.
Well, there may be a time, and it may not be that far.
I'm not going to bind the hands of my successor at World Athletics.
They will have to make a judgment in the fullness of time as whether you do have a third category.
Do you think that's the only sensible way?
No, I don't, at this moment, no, I don't.
But I'm not going to sit there, you know, when I'm not on the scenes telling everybody that, you know, because we did what we did when we did it.
I tend to agree with you.
I think we'll look back on this and see this as being a really big point of inflection.
But again, this is something that needs to be clarified.
The position we've taken in world athletics is that in elite level women's competition, we should not have transgender competitors for all the reasons you pointed out.
I talked about the ambition and the aspiration of young girls to come into your sport.
You absolutely need that.
But there's another issue, and you raised it, and that is the residual physiological, biomechanical, anatomical advantage that you maintain.
But we're not sitting here saying, nor do I have, I don't have the jurisdiction, I certainly don't have the moral disposition to tell trans athletes they can't enjoy the physicality of sport.
If a trans athlete wanted a run in the Falmouth 5K for the local hospital, I don't have a problem with that.
No, why would anybody have a problem?
But it fundamentally alters, it fundamentally alters the dynamic of elite-level international sport for women.
And that's where we've drawn the line.
I mean, there's also, I think, a clear safety issue.
Like, if you looked at the boxing, the women's boxing in the Olympics in Paris with Imam Khalif, who no one's really quite sure what the situation is with Imam Khalif, other than she was banned from the world championships for supposedly testing positive for male chromosomes.
She has refused to have a test, a public test, to say either way.
I think you want tests brought in.
We agreed that the other day, and it's in line with every international medical standard.
It's a simple swab test?
Yes, absolutely.
And it just determines whether you have male chromosomes.
Exactly.
And actually, there is an important element here as well, because for athletes with DSD, you're actually also wanting to identify the medical challenge.
For those who don't know, what is DSD?
It is effectively a woman, a girl that is born with male biology.
And the production of testosterone is, look, testosterone is the key determinant in competition.
You know, let me, again, if I can, I'm no scientist, but if I can put this into sort of simple terms, when my daughters, your daughters, were competing in primary school sports, up to about the age of 11 or 12, they were probably seeing off most of the boys in the class.
When puberty kicks in, the gap opens and that gap doesn't close.
So what we're really saying is that any athlete that passes through puberty should be clearly classified.
And again, the issue around the boxing, and it was just the lack of clarity.
Well, also, it was actually a problem.
Well, I thought it was worse, actually, because you had someone who'd been banned from the World Championships over serious question marks about her alleged chromosomes.
And you had a female fighter quitting after 40 seconds and saying afterwards, I've never been hit that hard.
And I found that pretty scary, that you may have a situation where somebody who, for all intents and purposes, is male, beating up a woman in a boxing ring in the Olympics.
There had to be more to it than simple identification of sex on a passport.
Right.
You know, it was really important that you have those systems in place.
And that's really all we...
What did you feel when you saw that?
Well, I'm sorry, I was on the British Boxing Board of Control for six years, and I have daughters.
I mean, how do you think I feel?
Tell me.
Well, uncomfortable.
Yeah.
Most people do.
But again, the people I think that were let down in that were, believe it or not, the competitors.
I don't disagree with that.
They were the athletes.
If you'd had systems in place that were clear and were clear and concise.
Which you had as world athletic.
That couldn't have happened.
Yeah.
And that's the problem about that.
And that's something we need to, that is something we have to address.
So to be clear, if you were to become president of the IOC, for example, you're in charge of the Olympics.
Would one of the first things you'd want is to have utter consistency over issues like this across everyone competing?
Yes, there is a clear caveat here because the international federations must themselves have the autonomy to make decisions that are in the best.
Can you override them?
No.
And we probably shouldn't.
The decision we took in World Athletics was because we felt it was in the best interest of the sport.
I'm not sitting here.
I'm not the kind of leader that sits there and goes, one size fits all.
But what I do think is it is incumbent upon the International Olympic Committee to at least set the tone and the thought leadership around this.
And international federations, I think, would take a lead.
The problem is that you just have, there's no clear-cut clarity around this.
And until you get that, I'm afraid you will have more examples of what we just talked about.
IOC Needs Clear Doping Rules 00:15:46
I was watching CNN yesterday and they had a sprinter called Cece Telfer who was biologically male competed as a male for a long time and then switched and said, I'm now a woman.
And I made the point on, I didn't mean to be transphobic at all.
I just said, look, this is somebody who presents like a man, talks like a man, sprints like a man, is a tall, powerful athlete sprinter, and is now smashing women's records.
And I said, I'm sorry, but to me, it's cheating.
It's as much cheating as doping because you are deliberately seeking an unfair advantage over your competitors.
Would you go as far as that?
I'm not sure I would use, I absolutely understand where you were coming from on this.
I'm not sure I would use that language.
What I would say is that you've got to have systems in place that prevent that from happening.
And you've got to go absolutely back to basics here.
Have your systems and everybody understands what that is.
I mean, look, you know, there are a set of records in one US state that have been set by two boys that turned up in a state championship and just suddenly said to the organising committee, we assigned to...
I think CC Telfor was one of them.
We're assigned as women.
Well, you know, you've got to have clear-cut, you've got to have clear-cut policies here because you're leaving even a local organising committee in a real quandary.
If you have those decisions that are made at the top and they're filtered down and they're communicated properly, then you're going to obviate a lot of the pain for athletes in this as well, because this is not an easy situation for an athlete to be in.
I don't sit here thinking that anybody that chooses to become, you know, to transition, to go through that transgender process, is somebody that is going through anything other than a trauma.
But I think we should listen to people like Caitlin Jenner, who when you were young, you would remember as Bruce Jenner winning Olympic decathlon gold medal, wrapping himself at the time in a big American flag, but he's become a real voice of sanity in all this.
Well, I know Caitlin very well, and of course, you know, we were not quite contemporaries, but one games before me.
And I had this conversation not that long ago in the US.
And I mean, to introduce a slightly comedic element, you know, she is absolutely clear that this has to be agreed with me, that you have to have clear-cut policies, and then laughed and said, I play golf.
Do you think I whack that off the women's tee?
You know, so there is a residual strain.
But she was invited to go off the women's tees originally when she first ran, and she said no.
No, no.
And she tees off the men's tees.
And that's why, interestingly, the compromise in the end, it could be there's a new category, or it could be they simply compete against their biological sex, as Caitlin does by going off the men's team.
When she plays golf.
I think there is a different scale of challenge here as well, because with all due respects, in athletics, you have somebody in that situation in an 800 meters or whatever it happens to be, they're probably going to win by half a straight.
That's embarrassment and frustration.
We're not a contact sport unless it goes horribly wrong and the judges have to get involved.
So there is a much bigger challenge in contact sports.
And that's where the safeguarding element of this and the physical safeguarding is really critical.
Do you, I mean, I'm not asking you to give a general view about President Trump, but on this issue, given he'll be president when the Olympics goes to LA, is he right on this?
He's right on the principle that, as we've just talked about, I'm not going to get into the local conditions that he's setting about, you know, visas and all that.
That is very much a US issue.
If I become president of world athletics, I also, I'm not naive and coy, that's in my intree.
But that's something I'm would, you know, there's no certainty of outcome here.
It's an election.
It's, as you know well, it's not an exact science.
But that is something that clearly would be a challenge.
But insofar as he has set out to protect the female category, then that, you know, the logic of what I've said has to support that nostril.
What about Russia?
Because they're currently banned by the IOC.
Athletes from Russia and Belarus were only allowed to compete in Paris as neutral athletes.
32 of them competed.
But I think you as World Athletics President, you went one step further and no track and field athletes from either country were allowed to compete even as neutral.
Yeah, but there's a bit more of a history to that, if you don't mind me saying.
I became president in 2015.
Talking about intrays, I had to deal with an intray that contained Russia that had, in the space of less than two years, 149 positive tests in athletics.
It wasn't something I could sit on my hands and say, oh, one more news cycle.
We'll sort this out.
And there were other things that were going on at the same time.
So in 2015, we suspended the Russian Federation.
We set up a task force.
It was independently chaired by one of the most eminent doping experts, anti-doping experts, a Norwegian.
And bit by bit and slowly by bit, over seven years, we actually got Russia into, and we have got them into a decent position, where the Athletic Integrity Unit, which is what I set up with my own reforms, has now got control of the testing.
We've got two or three independent people.
They've got a new federation.
And actually, had the Russia-Ukraine situation not raised its head, they would have been ready to come back.
And I would have been actually quite pleased with that because we'd been through the process clearly.
What works out, you know, what happens now is a little above my pay grade and is being discussed as we speak in Saudi.
So we actually introduced the concept of neutral athletes.
And when I did it, everybody said, oh, it'll never work.
And within a year, everybody was actually using it.
But when we got to the situation, and again, it's about integrity here.
This wasn't about passports or politics.
I'm not interested.
I actually studied Russian history, interestingly.
That's not why we did it.
The same guiding principles around what we've just discussed in transgender, for me, pertained in the Russia situation.
And that is that we suddenly had lost a country who had a proud tradition in track and field from being able to compete properly.
The male athletes were out on the front line, some of them losing their lives.
Female athletes were wondering where their husbands, boyfriends, and coaches were.
So it was just a very unequal situation.
But look, situations alter.
We have a working group that will look and monitor this and will regularly report back to the council as what situation must pertain.
But you have to put process behind it.
What I don't like is policy by press release and walking away from it.
I understand.
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If hypothetically there was a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and you've become president of the IOC, would you then see a scenario where Russia could come back and compete?
Yes, it's not for me to design peace treaties.
I mean, in that eventuality.
No, in that eventuality.
The war was over.
In that eventuality, you would have to look very, very closely at that.
And clearly, the world is an uncertain, complicated place, and it's not neatly packaged.
I mean, all wars end with a table, a map, and people.
It depends where the table is, who's sitting around it, and what does the map look like.
But that's clearly, I mean, I'm no expert in this field, but it's pretty clear that we will and can, I hope, Christ, I hope we get to that situation where this stops.
But if you get to a situation where you have a peace agreement, then you would have to look very closely at that.
You personally wouldn't have any ongoing issue with Russia in that eventuality.
No, you wouldn't, because the reality was you can only deal with what you deal with at the time.
But the criteria for them not coming back, the doping thing had been resolved to your satisfaction.
I mean, the council...
So the criteria for them competing was simply that they were waging what many believe to be illegal war in Ukraine.
If that was brought to a resolution.
And the integrity of competition was being badly influenced.
If we get to a situation where I hope we do, where an agreement is made and it meets with the satisfaction of both sides, I'm not an arbiter on this.
I'm not sitting here making a judgment about a Versailles treaty.
But what I do, if you're logical about this and you get to that position, then it is far better to have people in your sport rather than sitting outside it.
Would the same apply to Israel with the situation?
Well, look, I don't want to get into individual cases.
Israel is a very different case.
And its status with the United Nations and the way that it has been dealt with and the lack of sanctions.
I'm not saying I'm not falling on either side of that.
In fact, much of my month is spent speaking to the Israel Track and Field Federation and the Palestine Federation.
And my responsibility is to try to keep athletes in competition.
What is the current status with World Athletics with Israel and Palestinian Athletes?
They can both compete.
Right.
And we actually helped Palestine.
We helped Palestinian athletes into training and with some financial to support given the difficulties.
And actually that was with the approval of the Israel Track and Field Federation.
There are lots of moral questions that come up.
A lot of people think there should be no conflation with politics and sport.
I mean, is it impossible to avoid?
Look, I'm sorry to say it.
I won't pull my punches.
That is naivety personified.
Politics is the stuff of life.
Sport is the stuff of life.
Actually, if we're smart in sport, you should be forging even closer political relationships.
Because the reality of it is, if we want stadiums to be built, we want programs like kids athletics, we want to be able to harness sport for the benefit of health and vibrancy, particularly in local communities, hard-pressed communities, then sport is the best way of doing that.
And the people that have the ability to unlock those budgets are politicians.
So to sit there saying that politics and sport don't mix, they should, and we should be, there's a difference between party politics and sport, but we should be harnessing politicians.
One of my real objectives, if I become president of the International Olympic Committee, is to raise sport significantly higher on Government agendas because I will go to my grave knowing that sport is the most potent social worker in all our communities.
It does it 24.
Piers, you love sport.
You know what?
I've just seen it.
I've actually seen it time and time.
Well, I'll tell you what, I've just seen it really interestingly was in Saudi Arabia.
I went for the first time to Saudi Arabia two weeks ago and spent a week in Riyadh and they've got an incredibly young population.
I think it's like two-thirds under 35.
Only 4% of Saudis are over 65.
It's quite extraordinary demographic.
But since they made, through the Crown Prince, they've made a decision that they're going to replace the depleting oil supplies and therefore revenues with tourism, sport, entertainment.
And diversification.
But particularly based around sport.
This has proved incredibly popular.
And he's combined it with a thing to get all young Saudis to get out and exercise at least three times a day.
And it's proving very popular.
Yeah.
And you can see it transforming the country.
And this is what I would do to encourage all governments to recognize the extraordinary power that sport has, both in building up the health and fitness of local communities and diplomatically used properly.
It is the deftest of political sports.
Would you talk to, if you were to become president of IC, you're one of the most powerful people, if not the most powerful person in world sport when you do that?
And part of that job would be to interact with world leaders.
Would you feel happy, relaxed, comfortable?
How would you categorize it?
To pick the phone up to Vladimir Putin, for example?
And would you have any issue with that?
Well, I do this all the time, actually, in my capacity now.
I speak World Athletics.
Just in the last few months, I've had face-to-face meetings with people like Narendra Modi.
You know, this is not unusual.
And actually, before the doping crisis, which also we tend to forget raised its head also in the Sochi Winter Games, which was really where it became a really elevated issue, I'd had discussions with Russia about developing our sport at very sensible levels.
So this is something I'm actually quite used to.
And you have to speak to everybody.
You know, if you are promoting the cause of sport, it's not just going to be promoted by talking to ourselves.
So you would talk to Putin.
Of course you would.
Of course you would.
On the issue of doping, it's obviously been an endemic problem in many sports.
We've just seen a very odd situation in world tennis where Yannick Sinner, the world number one, came to some agreement to get a three-month doping ban with Wada, who are the body obviously for tennis and the doping.
He tested twice positive for a banned substance.
They believed his story that he got this from a massage therapist.
He sprayed it on his own injured finger before massaging him and so on.
But everyone's unhappy about this.
Novat Djokovic said he's been showing favoritism, Nick Curiosity.
It was a sad day for tennis.
Coming back to your central plank of consistency here, what seems undeniable is if you were a relatively unknown professional tennis player and you'd failed two tests, whatever the circumstances, bang, you're thrown out for two to four years.
If you're the number one, there seems to have been another rule for him.
Piers, I don't know enough about this case, and I certainly have none of the intimate details that would allow me to make any sensible judgment.
Tennis Cheating and Fairness Risks 00:07:48
What I will say is we work very closely in World Athletics with the World Anti-Doping Agency and I actually think it's a pretty good organization.
We created in our own sport the Athletic Integrity Unit.
And why did I do that?
Because I sensed exactly the point you're making. that in the past that some of our member federations from larger, more commercially expansive, more politically well connected were taking different positions on some of these doping issues than the smaller federations.
And the one thing I wanted out of the Athletic Integrity Unit, I think in large part we've achieved that, is I don't want any athlete to think that they're bigger than the system and that somehow reputation or status or the proximity of a big competition is going to be a diluting factor in the way that you treat it.
It's really important that, you know, athletics is a really, it is a fabulous sport, I would say that.
But you can't have a situation where the athlete in lane three thinks that they're at a disadvantage because in lanes two and four, you've got a better set of chemists at work.
It has to be free, fair, and open.
And the reason you have tough anti-doping regs is not just to weed out the cheats.
Yeah, that's important.
It's actually to protect the athletes, those competitors that want to do this cleanly.
I'm not remotely in a position to get into the individual cases of federations.
I think you've dropped enough hints.
But the one thing that it's really important is that you have, as we've talked about, consistency of decision.
And I want to see governments of all political persuasions putting more money into the World Anti-Doping Agency, so it's got more teeth to protect the birthright of sport and not less.
How many cheats do you think there are?
Oh, I have no idea.
I mean, what does your gut tell you?
My gut tells me that this is a battle you're never going to win.
That you know as well as I do, in every walk of life, there will be a few that are going to step beyond the written codified moral boundaries.
That's nature.
Risk reward is often a key consideration.
And you've got to be culturally savvy about this as well.
You know, if you're a street kid that, you know, is being offered through some unscrupulous coach or dealer a quick way to earning money, then the risk reward is probably not an unreasonable one.
So we need education programs that leave athletes in no doubt at all that we have the technology to pull them out and we will do that and it will be without fear or favor.
And I think that's about the only place you can leave it.
Are we ever going to be in a world where we have entirely clean spot?
I think it's as unlikely as being in the city and not having isolated incidents of insider trading or malfeasance, wherever it occurs.
When you think back to your big world.
It's human nature, really, isn't it?
When you think about your Olympic finals, for example, I don't know the answer, but do you know how many of the competitors you were up against later turned out to be cheats?
Or were there others you suspected who got away with it?
Well, look, my own views about suspicious athletes, I'll keep to myself.
But you've got to remember.
Could you tell, though?
I'm now carbon dating myself.
I was in a generation where we had very significantly less control than we do now.
I mean, if I tell you the ability to be able to identify a thimble full of an alien substance in a swimming pool, we've got biological passports.
It's a very much tougher regime.
And of course, we didn't have the issue, we don't have the issue now as we did then, of a divided world.
You know, sport was very much East and West, particularly in Olympic sport.
But, I mean, is it satisfying to know you won despite the fact there were probably quite a few cheats knocking around?
On the occasional John Smith's bitter on a Friday night in Sheffield, yes.
Do you still run?
I do every other day.
Do you?
It's a very charitable.
If you saw me, it will probably be a very charitable description.
What do you do?
How far do you run?
I run an hour every other day.
Do you?
And I do a conditioning program on the days I don't run.
And you still enjoy it?
I'm a Yorkshireman.
It's cheaper than buying a new suit each year.
But you still enjoy it.
I do.
I love it.
It's my mental freedom.
Well, what is it about running for you?
It's my mental freedom.
When you're running along now, having achieved all you've achieved, what are you thinking when you're running?
I'm just enjoying it.
The reason that you go into a sport, people say you choose a sport.
Actually, I think it's the other way around.
I think a sport chooses you.
I know you're an absolute rabid cricket fan.
Well, Lord Botham, for example, has never picked up a cricket bat from the day he retired.
He can't think of anything worse.
He doesn't do any charity games, nothing.
He just said, that's it.
And in fact, the last ball he ever faced was against the Australian touring team.
He was at Durham.
I don't know if you know this story, but the bowler came in to bowl, Botham came into bowl at an Australian batsman with, as he put it, his meat and two veg hanging out.
And that was the last ball he ever bowled.
He walked off afterwards, having made his little statement and never played again.
But you still run.
Well, Ian Botham's one of my heroes.
You will recognise that.
But again, there's a big difference when you're retired from retiring from a team sport and retiring from an individual sport.
I can put my running shoes on.
If I'm staying in a hotel, I'll run the treadmill.
If I'm at home, I'll just go and run wherever I'm able to do it.
It's the most accessible sport.
If you're beefy and you don't want to pick up, and you want to play, you've probably got to be still involved in a club.
You've got four or five hours.
It's much easier to retire from an individual sport as long as it's sort of fairly accessible and it's not, you know, you're not reliant on expensive cars or horses or yachts.
We'll talk about expensive cars.
Jensen Button told me that even now when he's out in normal streets in a fast car, he comes up to traffic lights and there's someone on a Porsche, they look at him, if they see him, they're like, okay, and they want to race him.
Lennox Lewis told me when he was the heavyweight champion of the world, every bar he went to in Harvard.
Yeah, of course.
The big guy would want to have a fight with him, right?
When you're out running now and there's another jogger comes along, right?
Do you feel the old juices flowing?
A little bit.
I love that.
But there was a more sobering moment a couple of years ago.
I was running with some friends in Australia.
We're on the boardwalk up in the Sunshine Coast.
And I knew my days were really well and truly over when I'm going what I thought was a reasonable lick and an 18-year-old kid in board shorts and flip-flops and a surfboard under his arm actually ran past us.
We all looked at each other and we went, okay.
It's over.
It's over, guys.
Well, the race you're now in is to be the president of the IOC.
It's March the 18th to the 21st.
It's the actual election.
It's a secret ballot.
Is it 100 members?
Yeah, about 111.
I mean, A, what do you think your chances are?
And B, what is your sort of final message to them if they watch this interview as to why it should be you?
Past Rivalry Becomes Political Race 00:03:49
Well, the final message is, I hope you've gathered from everything I've said that I think I've done within my life those jobs, those responsibilities, delivering an Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Chairing an organizing committee.
You know being active in in the sport as a competitor and president of.
You know a central that and and and my political background.
I'm hoping that people think I have the competence to do that, but I want to go further than that.
This is not a job for me, this is an absolute passion.
I think I can make a difference.
And look, you know, we all have strengths and weaknesses.
I know that one of my strengths is the ability to build teams and take people with me.
So look, it's ultimately up to the membership.
I think we've got some massive challenges ahead.
I think they're geopolitical.
I think they're commercial.
I think you get this again in a heartbeat, just the changing nature of broadcast, our ability to really continue to engage with young people and want them to fashion their futures through sport because it goes way, way beyond the medals table and the field of play.
It's a lifelong commitment.
And those are the things that I think I've really understood.
And I've come from a background where everything I've done has had an Olympic or a sporting background.
And I'm very proud to be able to say that.
And you're used to winning, but one of the very few people has just struck me who beat you was Steve Overt in the greatest rivalry of all time.
It just struck me, but do you still, are you mates?
Do you have any?
He lives in Australia.
He hasn't been in the UK for a long time, but we it was a rivalry that we probably didn't ever, we were very cautious about what we said publicly about each other.
But there was a moment of candor a few years ago.
I was actually babysitting one of his kids while he was commentating in the Commonwealth Games.
And I said to him, we were having supper afterwards, and his son Freddie, who was actually running for Australia, was asking questions, what's it like to run against my dad?
And I said, look, your dad was one of the most naturally talented athletes I ever met.
But I said, look, I'll, and Steve was at the table.
I said, Steve, I'll admit something to you that on Christmas Day 1979, the year before the Games, I was in Sheffield.
It was a Wagnerian winter.
The snow was coming down.
I'm sounding a bit like the three York coming out of Monty Python.
I'm trying hard not to.
And I ran that morning about 13 or 14 miles in horrendous conditions.
And during the afternoon with the, I don't know, the 900th rerun of the sound of music or dam busters, I felt uneasy.
I couldn't figure out what it was.
And I suddenly sat there thinking, I bet he's out doing another training session.
So completely obsessionally, I went up to my room, put my kit on, and just went out and ran another five miles, came back and felt really good.
And I told him that story.
This is years later.
He looked at me and he went, did you only go out twice that day?
35 years later.
We're still scoring points of each other, but he was an outstanding athlete.
That's great, great.
It's great to see you.
This might be the kiss of death, but you've got my endorsement.
I actually think you'd be brilliant in this job.
And I hope they see sense and give it to you.
Not just because you're a Brit and that would be great for us.
I think you've got the right ideas for this.
It's a big job that needs big ideas and a bit of moral courage.
And I think you've got that.
And that's what we needed running world sport right now.
Endorsement for New IOC President 00:00:41
A bit of moral balls under fire, for want of a better phrase.
Yeah, I may not include that in the manifesto.
That might not be the winning phrase, actually, now I think about it.
Getting sentiment.
But good to see you.
It is great to see you.
All the best.
Thank you.
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