Doping, lack of top players hurt baseball- Jacques Rogge

Concerns over doping and the lack of top players at past Olympics were the main reasons for baseball's ejection from the London 2012 Games programme, IOC president Jacques Rogge said.

Baseball and softball failed to win a majority of votes in a ballot of members at an IOC meeting in Singapore on Friday, becoming the first sports to be cut from the Games since polo in 1936.

"The message was that the IOC wanted the best athletes, universality and clean sport," said Rogge.

Baseball's image in the United States has been tarnished in the past year after a number of leading players were linked to steroid use.

US President George W. Bush, a former part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, has urged professional sport to rid itself of drugs and Congress has moved to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing substances.

The IOC decision provoked outrage in the United States where baseball is a national pastime.

"It was a bad call. Very disturbing," said Tommy Lasorda, the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager who led the US baseball squad to the gold medal in the 2000 Games in Sydney.

"I can't believe they would drop baseball and softball, two very, very big sports that are played throughout the world," Lasorda told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Rogge's comment that the IOC members wanted the best athletes reflected their disappointment that many of baseball's star players had stayed away from past Games.

The United States did not play at last year's Athens Olympics after falling in an Olympic qualifying tournament.

Many IOC members reacted with disappointment after the sports were axed. Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates was critical of the process.

"It should not have started in the first place," he said. "All they have done is severely disrupt the development of baseball and softball.

"Mr Bush was getting US baseball into line over doping, and softball has gone ahead in leaps and bounds since it became an Olympic sport."

US reaction ranged from disappointment to outrage.

Lisa Fernandez, a three-times gold medal-winning softball pitcher for the United States, said the decision "took her breath away".

"We proved as a sport we belong," she told Reuters. "They are destroying the dreams of billions of women. Not millions. Billions."

Rogge stressed that both softball and baseball were still Olympic sports and that they would be included in a 2009 vote to decide the sports programme for the 2016 Olympics.

"Baseball and softball could return to the programme if we consider they have addressed their shortcomings," he told assembled members.