World Athletics Championships 2019: Seb Coe takes swipe at BBC and presenter Gabby Logan

Coe called on the BBC to focus its attention on the sporting action, rather than wider political issues

Gabby Logan in action presenting the BBC's athletics coverage this week (PA)

Sebastian Coe, the IAAF president, has admonished the BBC and its presenter Gabby Logan following criticism of the World Athletics Championships on the broadcaster’s coverage.

The competition has been watched by a perpetually half-empty Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, and the decision to bring it to Qatar has come under scrutiny. BBC pundit Denise Lewis said “the governing body has let our athletes down”, while her colleague Michael Johnson was caught off camera telling Logan that Coe was “full of shit”.

“It’s very easy to sit there and make all sorts of Gabby Logan-type judgments over three or four days and clear off back to Match of the Day,” Coe said of Logan, who is leading the BBC’s athletics coverage in Doha and who sometimes presents the weekly football programme.

“But it’s really important that we see the long-term development of our sport. That’s not going to be done because we have challenges over ticketing in a stadium for three days. The problem I’ve got with that is it’s the way our sport is being portrayed by some of the people in that studio.”

Coe called on the BBC to focus its attention on the sporting action, rather than wider political issues.

“I’ve got people, whose judgment I do trust who are saying it would be great if a 1min 42.4sec run and some great performances were being dissected,” he said. “The crowd is an easier subject to talk about rather than some of the more insightful stuff around the events. I accept that, that’s the world we live in.

“There are places which are going to take longer for us to go to, but people have to believe this sport is theirs, it’s not just rooted in a handful of European capitals.”

He added that the athletes complaining about the venue are “probably not the ones who are going to walking home with medals from here. Go figure.”