Legs crossed and glasses balanced on the bridge of his nose, Sebastian Coe initially declines to comment on a question put to him. Then, he thinks for a second and gives his view.As World Athletics’ president, what did he make of U.S. President Donald Trump calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino during the recent World Cup to ask for a review of the one-game suspension given to United States striker Folarin Balogun following a red card?“If anybody picked up the phone to me and suggested that I might want to do something differently, it would be a bloody short conversation,” Coe says.As a man in the final year of his presidency at global track and field’s governing body — he was appointed in 2015 and has been re-elected three times since — this is not him going out in a blaze of controversy. Rather, it’s him being defiant about the state he is prepared to leave his sport in.That means modernizing its competitions and standing firm on the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes, even as the International Olympic Committee lifts its provisional suspension on those countries.“Our position hasn’t altered,” says Coe, who was president when World Athletics’ council first excluded Russian and Belarusian athletes in 2022. “We will always defend the integrity and the trust that we’ve developed in our sport.”