The International Olympic Committee ruled Wednesday that there will be no new sports for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, eliminating water skiing, ballroom dancing and other events lobbying to get into the Olympic program.
This means there will be 28 sports in Athens, the same number as at the Sydney Olympics.
The IOC also confirmed that sports and disciplines that have had provisional status — women’s softball, taekwondo, triathlon, beach volleyball and trampolining — will remain on the program in Athens.
Also, the maximum number of athletes to compete in Athens will be 10,000, the same as in Sydney, but more than 11,000 athletes wound up competing there.
IOC sports director Gilbert Felli said the decision to reject new sports for Athens was based on several factors, including the need to control the spiralling number of athletes and hold down costs. He cited the organizational troubles in Athens, where Olympic preparations have been hit by construction delays, political wrangling and personnel shake-ups.
But the IOC has left the door open to add or eliminate sports for the 2008 Games and beyond.
The biggest loser was water skiing, which has been aggressively campaigning for nine years to become an Olympic sport. Andres Botero, a Colombian who heads the international water skiiing federation, said he was “profoundly disappointed. I believe we did the right job. We developed our sport worldwide. I felt we deserved to be on the Olympic pogram. We came out at the wrong moment when Athens was having organizational problems. Everything was going very well until Athens started to slow down.”
