IOC Looking Toward Truly Modern Games : Olympics: The 12th Congress may add several new sports and also pick a long-sought replacement for former USOC president Robert Helmick.

One hundred years after a French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, welcomed sports leaders from throughout the world to the Sorbonne for the first official session of the International Olympic Committee, their contemporary counterparts will gather in Paris to contemplate the modern Olympic movement’s second century.

After the IOC’s executive board ends discussion of current business in meetings that begin today, the entire membership and more than 2,000 others considered part of the movement’s extended family will join in a six-day Centennial Congress that opens Monday with a ceremony at the Palais de Paris-Bercy.

When the IOC scheduled the 12th Congress, the first in 13 years, one of its intentions was to establish a program of sports for the modern Olympics that was truly modern.

But virtually all of the sports considered endangered--archery, equestrian, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and modern pentathlon--appear to have saved themselves, either through crusades by their supporters or popularizing rule changes. So it could be that the only changes in the program for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, will be additions.

Sports most often mentioned for inclusion are triathlon and taekwondo, but officials from eight others--water skiing, parachuting, bowling, golf, racquetball, squash, karate and roller hockey--are also here to campaign. Whether they have succeeded will be determined in an IOC vote during a two-day session that begins here on the day after the Congress closes.

The IOC also is expected to decide during that session on 10 new members, among them one from the United States to fill the vacancy created when former U.S. Olympic Committee president Robert Helmick resigned under a conflict-of-interest cloud in 1991. Because the IOC and the USOC have been unable to agree upon a replacement acceptable to both, the IOC since has had only one U.S. representative, Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles.

DeFrantz, however, has insisted that a new member should be elected at this session, in part to assist her with efforts to win support within the IOC for Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Salt Lake City, which lost its campaign for the 1998 Winter Games to Nagano, Japan, by only three votes, is considered the favorite among nine cities that will formally introduce their candidacies to the IOC’s executive board Saturday. The IOC will determine the site for 2002 in a vote June 16 at Budapest, Hungary.