World Athletics boss Sebastian Coe expects 2030 CWG to unlock India’s untapped potential

India is a market with “untapped potential”, according to World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe, who foresees the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad playing a vital role in promotion of track and field events in the country.

Coe made these observations while confirming that mixed 4x400m relay and the mile race, which were added to the programme for the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, will continue at the 2030 Games as well.

The mile race was last run in the 1966 edition and will replace the 1500m competition in the 2026 Glasgow CWG. Coe said the Commonwealth Games are very important from the perspective of athletics as the competition is very tough.

“Winning a Commonwealth Games medal in track and field is statistically very hard. If you want to win an endurance title, you have to take on the best, including, of course, Kenya. If you want to win a sprints title, you’ve got Jamaica and the UK and Canada sitting there in the wings,” Coe said during a virtual media interaction on Tuesday.

“So look, this is a tough championship. The track is always of a very high order.” Coe, a middle-distance gold medallist at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, said the 2030 Commonwealth Games can help the growth of track and field events in India.

“India is an important market for us. It has a lot of untapped potential. Track and field is becoming more popular in India, partly driven by some of the outstanding performances of Neeraj Chopra.

“And look, the opportunity to stage our events for commercial and for participatory reasons in a growing market, in a growing sports marketing market, is really important. And that’s got to be a good thing. And we’ve had lengthy discussions with the Indian federation and even some commercial partners about extending that footprint,” said Coe, adding that World Athletics would want more events to take place in India.

India has also bid for the 2028 World U20 Athletics Championships, and made strategic bidding of both the 2029 and 2031 Senior World Athletics Championships.

‘Depth of talent really sumptuous’

Coe praised the depth of talent in athletics currently.

“It’s a depth of talent we probably haven’t seen in a few generations. I’m not talking about one or two big names.

“In every one of our disciplines, track, indoors, outfield and road, we have a depth of talent, young talent coming through, which is really sumptuous.” Commercially too, Coe said, 2025 has been an “extraordinary year” for World Athletics.

“In the last four years we’ve grown our revenues by some 25 per cent. And of course, the very big number was around our outstanding World Athletics Championships in Tokyo where we had 1.4 billion viewer hours. We sold over 600,000 tickets in Tokyo with sellout sessions pretty much every night of the week,” he elaborated.

Coe frustrated by dopers getting leeways

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said he was as frustrated as anyone at the farcical situation surrounding the legal world record belonging to banned Kenyan Ruth Chepngetich’s marathon but added that the governing body’s hands are tied.

Chepngetich’s astonishing two hours, nine minutes and 56 seconds run in Chicago in October 2024 remains the legal World Record even though she was handed a three-year anti-doping ban this year, with her results expunged only from March.

Her excuse that she took her housemaid’s medicine was dismissed by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), which says it is continuing to investigate Chepngetich for other potential violations.

“I share your frustration, but I’m not a lawyer,” Coe said. “There are some legal challenges that the burden of proof can only be a positive test and evidence that doping infringement was taking place at the time of the performance and if you don’t have that it’s extremely difficult to extrapolate around other events.

“The AIU does everything that it possibly can, but it does also have to work within legal strictures – however frustrating that is.”

Chepngetich was one of a series of high-profile dopers to be caught this year, with elite American sprinters Marvin Bracy, Erriyon Knighton and Fred Kerley also earning suspensions.

(With inputs from Reuters)

Published on Dec 17, 2025