World Athletics chief Seb Coe supports UK Athletics’ controversial decision to send their smallest team in 18 years to the World Championships – would like the competition to include only the ‘best of the best’

World Athletics president Seb Coe supports UK Athletics’ decision to send their smallest team in 18 years to the World Championships.

UKA has come under fire for selecting just 51 athletes for Budapest and rejecting up to 20 athletes who qualified based on their world rankings. Some of the disqualified British athletes are considering legal action and have accused their governing body of leaving them at home to save money.

However, Coe has defended UKA’s right to choose only their top stars, despite effectively overriding his own organization’s qualification system, which requires half of the entrants to get to Budapest by passing standards and the other half via their world rankings.

“The World Cup, and it has long been my instinct, should be the best of the best,” said Coe. ‘You can have the Olympic Games universally, you have that freedom.

“But at the World Championships, which I’m responsible for, I want to make sure that when people tune in or sit in the stadium, they know they’re going to see the best of the best.

World Athletics president Seb Coe has defended UKA’s right to choose only their top stars

“So the size of federation teams, I’m not so focused on that. For me it is the quality of the athletes that they bring and UK Athletics will bring a very competitive team to Budapest, regardless of size.

‘The sovereignty of selection must lie with the member federation. I will never criticize a member federation for the policies they pursue.

‘Sometimes that policy is determined by budgets and sometimes by a coaching philosophy. My instinct is that this has more to do with the coaching philosophy than with budgets.’

Critics of UKA’s strict selection policy believe that by only selecting athletes they consider good enough to make at least a final, they are denying others valuable championship experience.

And Coe does have some sympathy for that view, remembering how Steve Cram learned from the experience of going to the Moscow Olympics as a teenager and finishing eighth in the 1500m final, which was won by Coe.

“I would always give room to get athletes in that environment and make them understand the pressure,” he added. ‘I didn’t understand it as an athlete until I had experienced a championship and learned to live in a village.

Only 12 men have been selected for individual events, including Zharnel Hughes (pictured)

“You don’t throw it out over 20 or 30 people, but it’s perfectly reasonable for a coach to pick the three or four people who they really think can teach that crucial aspect.”

“Steve Cram went to Moscow as a 19-year-old boy. He watched me and Steve Ovett further down the track, but it was that experience that had him Commonwealth and European champion within two years and World champion a year after that.

“He had little or no expectation of winning a medal, but getting to the final was priceless.

So I’m not saying your team should be based entirely on an uncompromising approach. You do need some space to be able to use it to give athletes that crucial experience that they don’t get by following a pacesetter in a Diamond League event.”