After months of waiting, a flood of rumors and a ton of questions, the IOC Executive Board has delivered its verdict. And it is, as is often the case in such cases, both highly anticipated and surprising. Wrestling, baseball/softball and squash have been selected by Olympic officials as the final three candidates for entry into the Olympic program starting at the 2020 Summer Games.
These three sports will be proposed to the IOC session in Buenos Aires on September 8, which will have to choose one and send the others to the back of the class. As a reminder, wrestling had joined the list of seven applicants (squash, baseball/softball, climbing, karate, wushu, wakeboarding and roller skating) after being proposed for exclusion by the same executive commission at the beginning of the year.
Basically, the content of this short-list may seem logical. The sports selected all have a certain universality, especially wrestling and squash. Between them, they form a sort of balance (a ball sport, a team sport, a combat sport). And all three led a strong lobbying campaign, with wrestling and squash going so far as to modify their format and playing field to appeal to the IOC.
In terms of form, the verdict delivered this Wednesday in Saint Petersburg, where the SportAccord convention is being held, is perplexing. What is the point, in fact, of telling wrestling one day that it can draw a line under its Olympic future, only to tell it two days later that its fate is perhaps not sealed? What justification is there for keeping intact the chances of baseball and softball (the first for men, the second for women), when these two disciplines were excluded from the Games program after Beijing in 2008? Finally, how can we understand that karate has once again been excluded, when this sport has been campaigning for its entry into the Games for several decades?
True to form, the IOC did not explain the why and how of this decision. Jacques Rogge, its President, simply declared that all the candidates had made an excellent presentation, that the choice had not been simple but that it was ultimately the right one. Damage.
