To want to open with the doors to the Games wide open, the IOC today runs the risk of making many people disappointed. The unanimous adoption of the Agenda 2020 resolutions last December in Monaco aroused the interest of several candidate sports for the Olympic program. They jostle each other. With two newcomers: billiards and snooker.
United like the fingers of one hand, the two disciplines very officially launched their candidacy campaign for entry into the Summer Games on Thursday January 22. With an ambitious objective to say the least: Tokyo 2020. Jason Ferguson, president of the World Confederation of Billiard Sports (WCBS), explained: “Originally, we were aiming for the 2024 Games, but we finally decided to move forward with our plans for an Olympiad. » A decision behind which it is easy to guess the effects of Agenda 2020, supposed to make the Games program more flexible and allow new sports to taste the atmosphere of the Olympics.
For the occasion, the two billiards and snooker institutions are joining forces: the WCBS, in charge of billiards and its disciplines, and the WPBSA, the World Professional Players Association. The two organizations want to submit the same file to the IOC, convinced of their chance of success.
Serious? Yes and no. Their leaders proclaim it loud and clear: the popularity of the two disciplines continues to increase on a global scale. Today they boast an audience estimated at 500 million people for major competitions on the international calendar, widely broadcast on television. Billiards is said to be played competitively in more than 90 nations. WCBS alone has around 200 member countries. The discipline made its entry into the World Games program in 2001 in Akita, Japan. Since then, she has not left the event.
But, for billiards as for snooker, there is the problem of the sporting legitimacy of a discipline more often contested in smoky bar rooms than in the setting of a gymnasium. Is it really a sport? Jason Ferguson responds without nuance: "There are few disciplines in which the best demonstrate such a level of concentration and push the limits of mental effort so far." To have. Above all, billiards does not weigh very heavily on the scale of diversity. Its competitors are rare, if not non-existent, a gap that is difficult to overcome at a time when the Olympic movement is pushing the parity cursor to the limit.
Let's be clear: it would take a miracle to see billiards or snooker players parade at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games in 2020. Baseball and softball remain solid favorites for entry into the Olympic program, in six years at least. Japan. On condition, however, that the IOC and the organizers of the 2020 Olympic Games agree to accept a new sport.
In the meantime, the example of billiards demonstrates once again that the resolutions of Agenda 2020, as legitimate and necessary as they may be, will not always be easy to implement. With billiards, karate, climbing, wushu, surfing, squash, inline skating and baseball/softball, there will soon be around ten candidate sports for the Games. But no one, as we suspect, to give them room.
