Although baseball, softball and modern pentathlon survived the cut Friday at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Mexico City, Don Porter, head of the International Softball Federation called it a wakeup call. “I guess it’s a compromise but it kind of keeps us in a shadow”.
According to The Toronto Star, many International Olympic Committee (IOC) members said they feel the three sports will be safe through the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, but IOC President Jacques Rogge insisted the sports are guaranteed only through 2004. He said the stay of execution for the three sports is “an opportunity, not a warning”.
Rogge said all three sports made major concessions following a report by an IOC commission that suggested the three sports should be eliminated from the Olympics.
He said softball and baseball agreed to share a stadium. And Rogge and the head of the International Baseball Federation said the best American players will be at the 2004 Athens Games.
The IOC won’t consider the three sports until 2005, but next year the executive board will review a number of individual events within other Olympic sports, including team synchronized swimming, keelboat sailing and race walking.
Rogge had suggested he would like to add golf and rugby sevens to the Games, but the IOC had already announced that it would only add a sport if the session decided to drop others from the program.
Now the IOC’s ruling executive board will have to focus its attention on cutting disciplines from other sports in the next few months to find other ways of scaling down the Games.
A report discussed at the IOC meeting suggested radical steps such as scratching disciplines like race walking and equestrian eventing.
Badminton, rowing, canoeing, and yachting are also in danger.
But after the events at the IOC meeting in Mexico City it’s clear that no sport is guaranteed its future in the Games and all international federations must find ways of making sure their sports remain attractive enough to keep their place.
The program will be reviewed every four years after each Olympics.
