International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. (left) and IOC presidential candidate Sergey Bubka (right) talk before the IOC Executive Board meeting at the SportAccord International Convention in St. Petersburg, Russia, yesterday. (EPA)
Reuters/St Petersburg
A plan by the newly-elected head of an umbrella sports body for a United World Championships every four years is not a good idea because of the already congested sports calendar, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said yesterday.
International Judo Federation boss Marius Vizer, who was elected president of SportAccord, an organisation of Olympic and non-Olympic federations, yesterday, said the new event was not planned as a rival to the Olympic Games. “They (the IOC) don’t have to be worried because it’s a different event with a different background, a different strategy,” he said. “We will do everything in partnership and in agreement with all international sports organisations.”
The plan is for the event to take place every four years, with the first edition in 2017. “The event will be organised in a country and events divided in different cities and different regions according to the infrastructure and different facilities necessary to every sport - of course in a period convenient for all international federations,” Romanian-born Vizer, an Austrian citizen, said after his election.
However, IOC president Jacques Rogge rejected the idea. “I am nearing the level of my irrelevance but it contradicts with the opinion of ASOIF (Association of Summer Olympic International Federations),” said Rogge, who is stepping down after 12 years in September.
“ASOIF 10 days ago came up with a declaration that the international programme is already too congested and that there are too many events,” Rogge said. “So this is something that has to be discussed not only between the IOC and SportAccord but also within SportAccord itself.”
An already busy international sports year will have one more event in 2015 with European Olympic Committees preparing the inaugural European Games to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Rogge defends wrestling U-turn
Rogge also defended the organisation’s dramatic U-turn on wrestling. Having removed the ancient sport from the 2020 summer Games programme in February, the IOC then included it on Wednesday, three months later, on a short-list of three sports competing for inclusion in those Games.
“I don’t see any shortcomings in the system, I don’t see any errors in the system,” said Rogge at the end of a three-day executive board meeting in St Petersburg.
He added: “We do not go for change for the sake of change. We only go for a review of the Olympic programme periodically to take the decision to lead the best Olympic programme. “I cannot forsee the future, (the IOC session) won’t go for a new one (sport) just for the sake of a new one. Novelty is not the issue, quality is the issue.”
Wrestling was part of the original ancient Olympic Games in 708BC and since the modern Games were resumed in Athens in 1896, it has only once been left off the programme, in 1900. Now it has been placed on a shortlist alongside baseball-softball and squash to compete for a single berth. The winning sport will be voted on during the IOC session in Buenos Aires in September, when the host city for the 2020 Games will also be decided.
Rogge praised the International wrestling Federation for its reaction to being initially dumped back in February. But he said that criticism and complaints would have been directed at the IOC no matter which sport or sports came under threat.
“If you look at the reaction of the federation to their admitted shortcomings, the international federation drastically changed its own governance, including women in the executive board - which was a criticism of the report from the IOC - changing the format of the competition, changing the presentation,” he said.
“Had we decided to eliminate another sport from the core sports, such as modern pentathlon, we would have been criticised for having betrayed the legacy of Pierre de Coubertin, who invented the sport.
“Had we decided to eliminate taekwondo, we would have been accused of betraying the spirit of Asian sport, I mean we would have had criticism for any sport that would have been eliminated.”
