MONACO: The Olympic dreams of some athletes look set to be shattered after Games chiefs agreed yesterday to scrap a cap on the number of sports, preferring instead a limit on events.
While that means sports fighting to win a coveted spot on the Summer Games programme have received a boost, existing sports with multiple events will need to jettison some disciplines to make room for the newcomers.
If sports such as baseball, softball, squash or karate are to feature, something will have to give.
Canadian International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound said there had been a “huge degree of consensus”, before speculating on which ones could face the axe.
“Everybody has to share the load for the good of the Olympics,” he said.
When asked which events he thought the Games could do without in order to pave the way for some new ones, Pound said: “synchronised swimming... and maybe triple jump.”
Any evaluation of sports and events would be done in collaboration with the sports’ international federations, the IOC said.
It will decide on the events programme for an Olympics not later than three years prior to the opening of the Games.
Meeting at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, IOC members agreed to drop the cap on 28 sports, voting instead to limit the Summer Games to 10,500 athletes and 310 events.
“This movement to an event-based programme will offer more flexibility,” IOC member Franco Carraro told members.
Members can now brace themselves for a period of intense lobbying ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games, with baseball and softball in particular seeking a spot on the programme. Golf and Rugby Sevens join the programme for the 2016 Games in Rio.
The Olympic movement must bolster its credibility and transform its money-spinning Games before it is forced to change, IOC leader Thomas Bach had warned ahead of votes on major reforms.
The International Olympic Committee has signed $10bn in television and sponsorship deals this year, but must confront looming challenges or “we will be hit by them very soon,” Bach told the opening of an IOC general meeting. “If we do not address these challenges here and now we will be hit by them very soon,” the IOC chief said. “If we do not drive these changes ourselves others will drive us to them. We want to be the leaders of change in sport not the object.”
Without referring to new allegations of widespread doping in Russian athletics, Bach said there had to be a new campaign against drugs in sport.
“We have first and foremost to protect the clean athletes. We have to protect them from doping, match-fixing, manipulation and corruption,” he said. “We have to consider every single cent in the fight against these evils not as an expense but as an investment in the future of Olympic Sport,” Bach added. AGENCIES
