IOC member foresees no sports change in Beijing Games

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, October 20, 2003

IOC member foresees no sports change in Beijing Games

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Although the future of three Olympic sports is yet to be decided until after the 2004 Athens Games, the Olympic Games will have the same number of sports in the foreseeable coming years, an veteran IOC member said here Monday.

Peter Tallberg from Finland, who has been IOC member for 27 years, didn't think the reduction of games scale, strongly advocated by the IOC president Jacques Rogge, will affect the Beijing Olympic competition program in 2008.

"There will be the same number of events (in Beijing Games). I think he (Rogge) would like to halt the expansion at the Games, but that has to do with sponsors and media...there're many many more media around the games than there're athletes," the five-time Olympic sailor told Xinhua.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) postponed a vote on dropping modern pentathlon, softball and baseball from the Olympics in the 114th session meeting held in Mexico City on last November 29.

After debating a controversial report on scaling down the Olympic program for the 2008 Beijing Games which proposed the exclusion of the three sports, and listening to emotional pleas bythe leaders of the three sports, the general assembly decided to put off any final decision until after Athens Olympics.

"I have been a IOC member since 1976, and there're only four who stay in the IOC longer than me," said Tallberg, "I think I've seen very well, there would be no big changes, not at Beijing in 2008."

"Some events within a sport might be changed, but there'll be no sports changes."

The IOC has not thrown a sport out of the Games since 1936. In a 2 1/2 hour-debate in the Mexico session, the majority of members said the organization needed more time to study the issue in detail before making a final ruling.

Beijing and IOC, however, are still taking steps to cut the Olympic cost. Rogge warned that the sports of softball, baseball and modern pentathlon, could still be removed out of the Olympics by the time as the 2008 Beijing Games. "All will depend on how they perform in Athens," said the Belgian.

The Games officials said, when they were in Beijing for their first full meeting with organizers last December, that plans were in the works to shrink the shooting and equestrian venues and build one baseball stadium rather than the two originally planned.

"The fact is we don't know yet if baseball will be in or not," said IOC sports director Gilbert Felli, "But we know that if it's in, it will be only one stadium instead of two that we had planned."

Tallberg holds a different opinion. "I think you can easily cutthe expenses and size of the games by making small changes," said he, "that could be in the number of guards used for the officials..., the athletes are more or less the same number, but the people around the games, that's growing too much."

It will be impossible anyway for new sports to join the 28-sport program in the near future. The IOC has been considering adding rugby union sevens and golf to the Games and but has already announced that it would only add a sport if the session decides to drop others from the program.

International Wushu Federation has also wanted to see the Chinese martial arts being included in 2008.

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