Three Sports in Jeopardy

An International Olympic Committee task force, mindful of President Jacques Rogge’s mandate to streamline the massive Summer Games, recommended dropping baseball, softball and modern pentathlon from the Olympics. Golf and seven-man rugby are their potential replacements.

Greco-Roman wrestling, equestrian’s three-day event and walk events in track and field were targeted for possible elimination in a report presented by the program committee to the IOC executive board Wednesday in Lausanne, Switzerland. To make changes, the executive board would have to accept the recommendations and send them to an IOC assembly, where a two-thirds vote is required for ratification. The next IOC assembly is scheduled for Mexico City in November.

If approved, the changes would go into effect at the 2008 Beijing Games.

The board rejected adding several winter sports but reiterated Rogge’s insistence that figure skating stay in the Games, despite the judging scandal that occurred at Salt Lake City in February. The IOC executive board heard a report from the French Olympic Committee on the still-simmering matter, in which alleged mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov was charged with conspiring to fix the pairs and ice dance events so ice dancers Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France would win. The French report exonerated the skaters. Rogge is expected to discuss figure skating during a news conference today that will close the meetings.

In a widely anticipated move, the executive board narrowed the field of candidates to host the 2010 Winter Games to Vancouver, Canada; Salzburg, Austria; Pyeongchang, Korea, and Bern, Switzerland. A final decision will be made next July. Vancouver and Salzburg are considered frontrunners.

That choice could affect bids by San Francisco and New York to host the 2012 Summer Games. If Vancouver gets the 2010 Games, the IOC is unlikely to return to the West Coast of North America in 2012. The chances it will select any U.S. city are slim because the Games have been staged in the U.S. and Canada six times in 26 years starting in 1976 at Montreal.

Former Dodger manager Tom Lasorda, manager of the gold medal-winning U.S. baseball team at the Sydney Games, said he was disappointed and shocked to hear baseball and softball are in Olympic jeopardy. Women’s softball was added in 1996, and the U.S. won gold medals at Atlanta and Sydney. Men’s baseball became a medal event in 1992.

“I think it’s wrong for them to do that,” he said, “because softball and baseball, you saw the crowds at the Olympics and the excitement at the Games. I don’t understand what the problem is.”

USA Softball spokesman Brian McCall said his organization hopes the full IOC will reject the committee’s recommendation.

“Our association spent 25 years getting our sport into the Olympics, and it’s something worth fighting for,” he said. “And we will do that in the next few months before they vote.”

IOC Director General Francois Carrard indicated the move might not have unanimous support, saying, “It’s not as much rubber stamp as you think.”

He also said he wouldn’t be surprised if supporters of dropped sports fight that decision in court.

“In today’s world, anybody can take any legal action against anybody for any purpose,” he said. “The only question is, where does it lead and who wins? Let’s just say I’m confident we would not lose.”

A media executive who requested anonymity doubts Olympic golf would succeed.

“Golf’s value as an Olympic TV sport is highly questionable, particularly without any guarantees that Tiger Woods would participate in an event that falls directly between the British Open and the PGA Championship,” he said.