IOC puts baseball, softball decisions on hold(Olympics won't add Chess and Bridge)

USA Today ^ | 8/30/02 | Vicki Michaelis

[Diddle E. Squat]

The board's 15 members discussed an internal report that recommends dropping baseball, softball and modern pentathlon, as well as specific events in several other sports, while adding golf and rugby in time for the 2008 Summer Games.

The board wants to talk to the federations that govern the jeopardized sports.

[Diddle E. Squat]

My granny is really ticked about Bridge not making it. There goes her shot at Olympic glory.

[LenS]

Badminton, mixed doubles
Canoe-kayak, slalom canoe
Equestrian, three-day event
Rowing, all lightweight events
Sailing, keelboat class
Shooting, unspecified disciplines
Swimming, synchronized team
Track and field, racewalking
Wrestling, one unspecified discipline
Why would they cut events out of these sports? Host cities will still have to build facilities for these sports anyway. These events help to give fans more stuff to watch and they give the various sites more usage during each Olympics (i.e. more ticket sales to pay for the cost of building them). The only cut here that makes sense is racewalking. That's because you have to watch every competitor's every step for kilometers to make sure that they don't cheat. It's just too difficult to regulate fairly.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

If they have to cut something, why not start with those "sports" where the winners are determined by "judges" that award "style points"?

Baseball and softball at least are pretty much objective when it comes to scoring (sometimes blind umpires notwithstanding).

[lawdude]

Tiddley manufacturers are really ticked at the failure of the IOC to do more than just wink at their proposed inclusion as a sport.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Well done.

[Britton J Wingfield]

They should sack wushu, karate, and tae kwon do, and just go with Pancrace, the original no-holds-barred olympic event.

[LenS]

Probably because gymnastics and figure skating drive the ratings. No skaters, no prime time ratings victories for NBC in February sweeps -- thus no billion dollar payments to the IOC. To a lesser extent, the same holds for gymnastics.

[BigBobber]

They should dump half the medals in swimming. In what other sport can you get 7 medals in a single Olympics? In most sports you're competing the entire two weeks just for a shot at ONE medal.

My favorite sport, lacrosse, is not in the running :^(
(Although the U.S. won the World Cup in Austrailia this year.)

[ConservativeTeen]

I agree, watching Pankration would be fun, since I am a big fan of the NHB/MMA scene. I would also add that taking out Greco-Roman Wrestling would be horrible, it's one of the few olympic sports that I really like to watch.

[LenS]

Well, a male gymnast could potentially get eight (floor exercise, horse vault, rings, horizontal bar, pommel horse, parallel bar, individual all-around and team). For example, Vitaly Scherbo took six golds in Barcelona in gymnastics.

But since only Mark Spitz ever took seven swimming golds (three of which were for team relays), why do you consider it a problem? Besides, reducing the number of events would reduce the cost return of building an indoor pool and stadium. It would also punish swimmers in the different specialties. By your logic, track should simply run a marathon, the metric mile and the 100 meter.

[NYCVirago]

What about Scrabble? Why aren't they considering that for the Olympics?

[BradyLS]

Not that Figure Skating is a "sport" either, but Ballroom Dancing would have given the summer games that sort of eye-candy that Figure Skating provides for the winter games. A shame, really.

It would be cool, I think, to have Chess or Bridge in the Olympics, though I can understand Bridge not making it due to the inescapable luck of the deal. Chess might make it in if they package-dealed it with, say, Go.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Scrabble is out because the British and US delegates could never agree on 'rumor' vs. 'rumour', 'gray' vs. 'grey', etc.

[chnsmok]

Where is elbow-bending?

[Diddle E. Squat]

IIRC, its a bit east of Carmen San Diego.

[strela]

Rejected new sports:

...
Bridge
Chess

Oh yeah, THOSE would be riveting television viewing.

[Poohbah]

Blitz chess is GREAT viewing, because you're wondering just how these maniacs can play a better game than you can...and do it in only two minutes.

[NYCVirago]

Scrabble is out because the British and US delegates could never agree on 'rumor' vs. 'rumour', 'gray' vs. 'grey', etc.

True!

[strela]

Blitz chess is GREAT viewing, because you're wondering just how these maniacs can play a better game than you can...and do it in only two minutes.

The green film accumulated on the sour cream in my fridge could probably beat me 9 games out of 10. I love playing the game and watching good players play; I'm just not very good at it myself.