Three with a sporting chance

It's a race of three - and on Sunday there will be no prizes for placing second or third; just more frustration on the outside of the Olympic Games family.

Wrestling, one of the original Olympic sports, as well as baseball and softball, which have launched a combined bid to be reinstated for the 2020 Summer Games, and new kid on the block squash, have lobbied feverishly to be part of the world's greatest multi-sport event.

The International Olympic Committee's 100-plus members will approve one of those bids in its session in Buenos Aires.

Eight hopefuls started the campaign to be in the 2020 Games, and these are the last three standing after some furious work in front of and behind the scenes.

Wrestling, which was unceremoniously dumped in February as a core Olympic sport for 2020 - despite being part of each modern Olympics since 1900 - would appear to have the inside track.

Its cause is helped by the fact IOC vice-president Thomas Bach, a frontrunner to replace Jacques Rogge as president of the IOC next week, has given his support.

"I have the impression that the international federation (FILA) has understood very well the messages sent to them (in February)," Bach told the Foreign Press Association in Berlin in late July.

"The international federation has drawn its conclusions. It is now here with a new president, new program and new ideas for the sport. That is why I personally believe that wrestling has good chances to come through the vote in September,"

However, confidence is also high in the squash community, with its lobbying being spearheaded by world No 1 women's player, Nicol David of Malaysia.

Andrew Shelley, the CEO of the World Squash Federation, told China Daily recently: "As a new sport, squash would be low cost and easy to integrate into the Games with just 64 athletes and two gold medals. Squash could share a venue if required, or be located to showcase an iconic backdrop - and we have a track record of doing exactly this, such as in front of the Pyramids, in Grand Central Station New York and alongside Hong Kong Harbor.

"In fact, the Chinese Squash Association has already held a great event on the Bund in Shanghai which I was honored to attend, as I have for a show-court event in Hangzhou.

"We are a genuinely global sport played in 185 countries by many millions across the world. And we are a growing sport in regions such as South America, central Europe, China and India.

"World women's No 1 Nicol David has said that she would happily trade her record seven World Open titles for just one Olympic gold - this is what joining the Games would mean for our players."

The combined baseball/softball bid for reinstatement, after both sports were dropped following the 2008 Beijing Games, might be the longshot of the final three due to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig saying the Games would not interrupt his league's season - thus denying the event of an American Dream Team along the lines of the US basketball side.

"This campaign is the culmination of eight years of hard work to better understand how baseball and softball's massive worldwide support base amongst young people and players, and broadcast and sponsor appeal can be presented in new ways that are in alignment with the priorities with the Olympic Movement," co-presidents Riccardo Fraccari and Don Porter said on the bid's website, playball2020.

tymglaser@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/06/2013 page23)