Denver conference allows sports to make pitch to IOC

DENVER • There's a chance the International Olympic Committee won't take any new sports for the 2016 Games. At most two will be added. But the stakes are too high for the seven sports that have been short-listed for consideration to be discouraged.

Federations for squash, baseball and softball have booths at the SportAccord conference, as they lobby for an Olympic bid. Rugby, golf, karate and roller sports are the others under consideration.

The seven sports will make a presentation to the executive committee this June in Switzerland, in August the executive committee could recommend two or three sports for a vote and they will wait for the final vote in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October. The process is long and difficult, and there's no guaranteed payoff.

"It's like climbing a mountain, isn't it?" said Natalie Grainger, a former top-ranked squash player who came to SportAccord to promote squash. "But it's the pinnacle of everything, so I guess it should be hard."

The door is closed pretty tight, as a group trying to get women's ski jumping in the 2010 Olympics has found.

It held a press conference Tuesday morning in a hotel less than a mile from the SportAccord headquarters, pleading again for IOC president Jacques Rogge to meet with them. Last week they sent a letter to Rogge's office, with confirmation of receipt, and sent him a fax.

They didn't hear back, and they didn't get a meeting with Rogge before they had to leave Denver at 3 p.m. The IOC said, however, that Rogge didn't receive their request for a face-to-face meeting with two of the athletes until they had already left Denver, according to the Associated Press.

"It's very disappointing and it's hard to take because we've put our lives into this," Canadian team member Katie Willis said about the difficulty in getting accepted to the Olympics.

There are 15 women ski jumpers from six countries who have pursued a legal case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to be included in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, citing discrimination. Men's ski jumping is an Olympic sport.

Without inclusion in the Olympics, American team member Lindsey Van worried that many top women ski jumpers would quit the sport. She was also concerned that the sport wouldn't get funding afforded Olympic sports.

"Basically our funding goes out the window," said Van, who is part of the lawsuit.

Sponsorship money is a major reason the sports want into the Olympics. There is also pride. Sports like softball and squash don't have championships as prestigious as an Olympic medal.

The representatives at SportAccord gave reasons why their sport should be picked.

Women's ski jumpers point to their growing participants and gender equality. Squash legend Jahangir Kahn, who once won 555 straight matches over a five-year span and is also at SportAccord, said 175 countries and almost 200 million people play squash. Softball's pitch centers around the sport's values, such as the lack of a positive drug test when it was in the Olympics.

There are Web sites devoted to the causes (backsoftball.com and wsj2010.com among them). This week, International Softball Federation representatives will split up, with one going to New Zealand and another to Vancouver to speak to Olympic committees, with another staying in Denver.

Every sport feels it should be included, but there is no way to tell which - if any - will be selected.

"There's really nothing to go by," said Jessica Mendoza, a two-time U.S. softball Olympian. "I wish there was a specific formula, like if you meet this criteria you're back in. But it's a lot more subjective."