Athletics: Coe and Christie collide again on air

Two former greats of British athletics, Sebastian Coe and Linford Christie, yesterday reopened their year-long feud with a furious exchange on Radio Five Live. As Coe was being interviewed by Simon Mayo, Christie telephoned the BBC to confront his erstwhile Great Britain team-mate.

The clash stemmed from Christie's comments alleging that athletics was "corrupt" and that he would not encourage his children to take part in the sport. In a newspaper column last February, Coe responded: "If officialdom was to blame for anything, it was to turn a blind eye to his boorish behaviour."

Yesterday, Christie, the former 100m Olympic champion, said: "All I want to say is that you were totally misinformed and I just want you to say you are sorry. My problem is with the IAAF [athletics' world governing body] because they banned me for something I didn't do [Christie was banned in 1999 after testing positive for nandrolone], You misinterpreted my comments and your article was misinformed.

"I would never criticise the volunteers in Britain who do so much work for youngsters in our sport – I am one of those volunteers. The reason I said I didn't want my children to go into athletics is because no matter how good they were they would always be compared to Linford Christie."

Coe replied: "I wasn't misinformed. I had your comments in front of me when I wrote what I consider to be a well-thought-out piece. British athletics is not corrupt, the volunteers who help out are not corrupt. I want my children to take up athletics."