Nicole Jeffery | August 13, 2009

Article from: The Australian

RUGBY union will go into tonight's vote by the International Olympic Committee executive board as a clear favourite to win endorsement for its campaign to return to the Olympics in 2016.

The IOC executive board will meet in Berlin to select two sports which it will recommend to its general assembly for inclusion in the 2016 Games. The IOC congress will meet in Copenhagen on October 9 to decide if it will accept the proposal.

There are seven sports under consideration -- rugby (sevens), golf, softball, baseball, squash, karate and roller sports -- but rugby, golf and softball are considered to have the inside running.

Olympic insiders are universally backing rugby to receive the executive board's approval, although reports are mixed as to which other sport will go through to the general ballot. The International Rugby Board has made a concerted effort to push the female side of its sport since it was rejected at the previous IOC congress four years ago, an argument that holds sway with a body intent on improving gender equality.

The sport is expected to find favour with IOC president Jacques Rogge, a former rugby international for Belgium as well as an Olympic sailor.

Golf also has powerful supporters, not least its stars. Tiger Woods declared yesterday that he intended to play the 2016 Olympics if golf was on the program, and Ireland's triple major winner Padraig Harrington also backed the move.

Woods, who would be 40, said he would play "if I am not retired by then".

"I think that golf is a truly global sport and I think it should have been in the Olympics a while ago," Woods said. "If it does get in, I think it would be great for golf and especially some of the other smaller countries that are now emerging in golf. I think it's a great way for them to compete and play and get the exposure some of these countries aren't getting."

Harrington "would love to be an Olympian".

"Doesn't that sound good?" he said. "Imagine us being Olympic athletes. As a golfer, I would think we have all the credentials to be Olympians."

In the previous ballot, softball was removed from the 2012 Olympic program by just one vote after it was snared in the backlash against baseball, which was sunk by a poor doping record and reluctance by the American major leagues to commit to the Games.

There is considerable international sympathy for softball, which was caught in a situation not of its making last time, and is one of the few female-dominated sports on the program.

A poll by the International Sports Press Association this week favoured rugby and karate, with golf the third choice.

However, the issue of which sports are included in the Games has become notoriously unpredictable, at both executive board and assembly level, since the IOC put a 28-sport cap on the program.

London 2012 includes just 26 sports because supporters of baseball and softball organised a protest vote once their sports were dumped last time, ensuring that no new sports were added.

At the meeting in Singapore, any new sport needed a two-thirds majority to win inclusion, but the voting process has since been simplified. A candidate sport now needs only a simple majority.

The IOC has yet to decide if there will be a bloc vote for both sports, or if each will be put forward separately. That decision could also strongly influence the fate of the two preferred candidates.

Australian IOC member Phil Coles, a member of the committee's program commission which prepared reports on the seven candidate sports, said the issue remained too complex to predict.

"There's still a lot of balls in the air," Coles said.

"A lot of the members have very different views on this."

The executive board will also consider the nomination of new events to be included in the London Games program from established Olympic sports.

It is expected to back the inclusion of women's boxing, in the name of gender equality. Boxing is the only current sport on the program that does not feature women's competition.

Other events under consideration include 50m form-stroke events in swimming and mixed doubles in tennis.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html