Worried athletes call for Games expansion

Edgy athletes fearing a cull of sports from the Olympic programme want the International Olympic Committee to raise the minimum number of sports needed to stage a Summer Games from 15 to 25.

The Athens Games in 2004 showcased 28 sports, the maximum permitted under IOC rules. But at the IOC's Session in Singapore in July softball and baseball were slung off the programme, the first sports to be cut from the Games since polo was axed in 1936.

Athletes now fear there is nothing to prevent the number of sports being whittled down to the minimum of 15, handing a larger slice of Olympic revenue to the remaining sports.

Former pole vault great Sergei Bubka, chairman of the IOC's athletes' commission, said he had asked the IOC's Executive Board this week to raise the minimum.

"Since Singapore there has been a lot of discussion about this," he said at the IOC's headquarters in Lausanne.

"The minimum number of sports needed currently is 15. The athletes' commission believes it should be 25.

"We lost two sports in Singapore but you didn't see anyone get in. This has created a lot of concern and worries from athletes."

A ceiling limit for sports of 28 was set at the 2002 Session in Mexico City but the minimum of 15 has stood for decades.

The upper limit was imposed to combat the expansion of the Games. Nobody had anticipated them shrinking in size.

But softball and baseball's expulsion means London will stage a reduced Olympic Games in 2012. The last Olympics to be staged with 26 sports was Atlanta in 1996.

The IOC rejected proposals to replace the axed sports with two from rugby sevens, golf, squash, karate and roller sports. None of them managed to get a two-thirds majority of Olympic members.

Bubka called for that rule to be changed to leave a sport needing just a simple majority to be added.

"We have to be realistic," he said. "Two-thirds was difficult to achieve. A simple majority would give sports more of a chance."

Softball and baseball are both lobbying the IOC to reverse its decision to axe them from the 2012 programme at the next session in Turin in February.