Jump to content

IOC Drops BASEBALL & SOFTBALL FOR 2012!


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 65
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Initially the idea was not to cut the number of Olympic sports - when baseball and softball were cut from the programme they were to be replaced by two of either karate, golf, rugby-sevens, squash, rollerblading. When it came to voting in Singapore these options failed to get majority support - it's not beyond the realms of possibility that baseball may return or perhaps more probable that squash and/or rugby will become Olympic sports by 2012. When the IOC made these decisions they stated that the number of medal events would increase within the existing sports to compensate the absence of softball and baseball.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the reasons why Baseball and Softball were dropped from the London 2012 Olympic programme is because the United Kingdom does not have much interest in these sports. I know the UK is a member of the International Softball Federation, but the UK has not had any stadiums suitable for baseball or softball.

Yeah, because Australia, Greece and China are all mad for Baseball and even more for Softball.

As much as I like Baseball, it just isn't played enough around the world to merit a place in the Olympics. How many actual honest-to-god Italians and Dutch were there at the World Baseball classic? And both Chinas, South Africa and Australia just plain sucked!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When the IOC made these decisions they stated that the number of medal events would increase within the existing sports to compensate the absence of softball and baseball.

I can guess what's gonna happen now...they'll add a few more distances to the bloody swimming to make up the numbers. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that there are enough medals already devoted to swimming.

I am generally in favour of dropping Softball and Baseball due to lack of interest in the host country. I would have replaced them with Rugby 7's as that would be well supported in the UK and attract strong support from the home countries.

Roller Sports ? I really hope not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i agree that should have never been dropped

the IOC have to drop sports and not add as a means of cost cutting. Forget about adding its time to cut and chop. Like equestrian, the cost of this so called sport do not justify it being in the olympics. The IOC keeps equestrian in the games just to make royality happy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
Yeah, because Australia, Greece and China are all mad for Baseball and even more for Softball.

As much as I like Baseball, it just isn't played enough around the world to merit a place in the Olympics. How many actual honest-to-god Italians and Dutch were there at the World Baseball classic? And both Chinas, South Africa and Australia just plain sucked!

But if you notice, a few of those South African adn Australian players were drafted into the Minor Leagues. It says somethign about the potential.

As for China... never discount them. THey could easily be a baseball powerhouse given enough time.

ALso, look at Japan and Korea and all the Latin AMerican teams. They blew the US team out of the water. In fact, if you look at the way they play the game, they play it BETTER than the US, which mainly caters to the long ball these days. THe US couldn't play little ball.. and when they played Japan and Korea, they got picked apart.

As for Japan... they had the one of the best pitchers playing for them... and the only one in the world who knows how to throw the Gyroball. Daisuke Matsuzaka will be wearing pinstripes in 2 years... guaranteed.

:wacko:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Let's not forget why baseball and softball were brought into the Games programme in the first place - to boost viewing figures in the US. Given that the American television rights holder is the IOC's biggest paymaster, it's understandable that the movement will have wanted to make concessions. However, it is well known how little American viewers care for sports outside their own realm, or even those sports which are popular domestically but which in the Olympics do not possess the right star names (i.e. baseball, ditto ice hockey). Not enough viewing figures equals not enough power to sell advertising time, hence drop it in favour of something more engaging - such as "The X Factor" (or the like).

I wonder how many baseball grounds constructed for Olympic Games in countries where that sport is not hugely popular are now lying largely derelict.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can guess what's gonna happen now...they'll add a few more distances to the bloody swimming to make up the numbers. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that there are enough medals already devoted to swimming.

I am generally in favour of dropping Softball and Baseball due to lack of interest in the host country. I would have replaced them with Rugby 7's as that would be well supported in the UK and attract strong support from the home countries.

Roller Sports ? I really hope not.

The Winter Olympic program is bringing its sport list up to date, better than summer one. They added snow board, free style, short track and so on…. Then my sons (14 and 19 years old) watched Torino 2006 TV without zapping after 2 minutes.

Well, the WO have more rooms for other sports and disciplines, but why don’t IOC try to rationalize and reorder the Summer program, starting at first from the existing sport list?

If we look at 2 sport (athletic and swimming) they have a total of events and medals greater than the sum of other 10 Olympic disciplines. Therefore, it could be reasonable to cut some events to have, for example in athletic, some speed events, some medium – long distance events, one shot (javelin is good, shot put……mmhhh, hammer is ridiculous nowadays), jumps ( I think all are good ) and few others.

Nobody follows and understands decathlon, which, beside, is a double of other events. Walk is only for elite spectators and very hard to judge by the controllers.

The same for swimming, tens of distances, relays, styles, mixes.

I like very much those two sport, but they already have the world championships to show billion of people all their disciplines and events and they don’t need to block the already congested Olympic program.

……….

Greetings by logic - Italy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we look at 2 sport (athletic and swimming) they have a total of events and medals greater than the sum of other 10 Olympic disciplines. Therefore, it could be reasonable to cut some events to have, for example in athletic, some speed events, some medium – long distance events, one shot (javelin is good, shot put……mmhhh, hammer is ridiculous nowadays), jumps ( I think all are good ) and few others.

Nobody follows and understands decathlon, which, beside, is a double of other events. Walk is only for elite spectators and very hard to judge by the controllers.

Welcome to Gamesbids.

I don't think there are too many disciplines in swimming or athletics - staging the shot-put, middle distance running and swimming doesn't add any significant costs to holding the Olympics as the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre would both have to be built anyway. Many of the classic moments of the Games have come from the track and field events - Seb Coe and Steve Ovett in the 1980 800m and 1500m finals for example - reducing the number of distances could have resulted in one of these being cut and that would have also cut down the excitement at the time.

The athletics and swimming venues aren't too cluttered, spectators paying to see these events and also people watching on television at home don't want long periods of time with nothing going on infront of them, and six or seven finals every evening keeps excitement at a high level through the full two weeks of the Games.

These days broadcasters provide an interactive coverage of the Olympics, meaning if someone watching at home doesn't want to watch the live athletics in the stadium they can opt for maybe gymnastics, weightlifting, boxing, or basketball instead - this allows everyone to choose which live event they would prefer to see in a way no other sporting or cultural event offers. This was extremely successful in the UK on the BBC for the Athens Games.

If some events are to be cut from the Olympic schedule it should be those sports that no longer appeal to a worldwide audience and the cost of staging them would surpass the interest in them - there's only Modern Pentathlon that I think fails to meet the criteria. Equestrian events, table tennis, judo, etc... remain hugely popular sports in many countries of the world and are also sports that appeal to many people who probably wouldn't usually be interested in watching the Olympics.

As for the Decathlon, what's so difficult to understand? There's ten events that the athlete must complete and be scored as highly on as possible - the athlete with the highest total wins the gold medal. The decathlon is billed as one of the main Olympic disciplines in athletics - it is one of the hardest events and the successful athletes in this eventwill be among the best in the world and is also the sport that most represents the heritage of the Olympics in Ancient Greece. I'm confident that the decathlon will never be dropped from the Olympic programme!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome to Gamesbids.

I don't think there are too many disciplines in swimming or athletics - staging the shot-put, middle distance running and swimming doesn't add any significant costs to holding the Olympics as the Olympic Stadium and Aquatics Centre would both have to be built anyway. Many of the classic moments of the Games have come from the track and field events - Seb Coe and Steve Ovett in the 1980 800m and 1500m finals for example - reducing the number of distances could have resulted in one of these being cut and that would have also cut down the excitement at the time.

........

Thanks for welcome and for interest in my opinion. I'll try to better explain my point using your statements.

Seb Coe ...... I don't think Coe was born to win exactly 800m, he won that game because that one was in the program, perhaps he could win 1500m or other. I am sorry, but with this your principle, why don't we add 50m (like some athl. meetings),650m, 2000m, 4000m, run with one leg and, esathlon, dodecathlon ......... For each eventual event we will certainly have a wonderful hero clapped by millions of fans.

Decathlon...... Try to talk with hundreds of millions students in high school, they will rather ask you to introduce skate board, some dance, surf, kick boxing.... But, any way, I didn't mean to cancel those and other events from the World IAAF Champ or FINA Champ, but to reduce the events only in the OLYMPIC GAMES that, besides, cannot be the sum of 28 world championships. And this is more true for these two great and wonderful sports, with their Worlds broadcasted in every corner of the planet. But... the other sports? The problem is not only the sites but the number of competitors; IOC says: maximum 15.000 athlets, 28 sport, 15 days and so on......

The OLYMPIC GAMES are not made only for supporters of particular sport but for those interested in the whole sport activity, interested in the world sport community and their biggest festival, the goal of OG is to call the best women and men and to share their efforts and enthusiasm every four years with the whole world.

I am a supporter (and master and Olympic International Referee) of Taekwondo , introduced in OG recently. We can have in the Olympics only 4 weight categories, instead of the 8 or 10 used in World Champ. It is not good for our competitors (ten kg difference between each cat.) but is better than nothing. We waited 40 years for this goal, now taekwondo is one of the most popular fighting sport in the world and we expect 100 million praticants in the near future. In Sydney 2000 and Athen 2004 Taekwondo sold 99% of all tickets (IOC source), the site was full every day on the 4 day's competition.

If we want to have rugby, squash or golf in the games we must rationalize and reorder the events inside each sport, otherwise the other mean is the war among sport: kick one off and put my sport in.

Thank you again and bst rgds

:)

Logic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am a supporter (and master and Olympic International Referee) of Taekwondo

Wow, that sounds great :)

I'm sure as Taekwondo becomes more established as an Olympic sport and benefits from having an increased profile and greater popularity as a result of being exposed to a wider audience more medal events within the sport will be added. It's still a relatively new sport to the Olympic programme, athletics and swimming have been there since 1896 and are both extremely popular and among the few backbone events of the Summer Games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, that sounds great :)

I'm sure as Taekwondo becomes more established as an Olympic sport and benefits from having an increased profile and greater popularity as a result of being exposed to a wider audience more medal events within the sport will be added. It's still a relatively new sport to the Olympic programme, athletics and swimming have been there since 1896 and are both extremely popular and among the few backbone events of the Summer Games.

Kiss up all you want, it ain't gonna get you ringside seats at the Taekwondo venue.

BTW, welcome logic and thank you for seeing the wisdom of my words.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kiss up all you want, it ain't gonna get you ringside seats at the Taekwondo venue.

Damn!! :angry:;):D

Not all of us here are so comfortable bullying the new members - anyway being an Olympic Referee is a big deal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Damn!! :angry:;):D

Not all of us here are so comfortable bullying the new members - anyway being an Olympic Referee is a big deal.

Quote

Kiss up all you want, it ain't gonna get you ringside seats at the Taekwondo venue.

BTW, welcome logic and thank you for seeing the wisdow of my words.

Unquote

Hallo gentlemen, I'm afraid my bad english doesn't let me understand well ( particularly ironic senses) but......... are you making fun of me :( ?

Anyway I'm happy and honoured to exchange my opinions with you :lol::lol:

Logic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hallo gentlemen, I'm afraid my bad english doesn't let me understand well ( particularly ironic senses) but......... are you making fun of me :( ?

Logic

He was making fun of me being suddenly nice - I'm usually the nastiest person on the forum!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hallo gentlemen, I'm afraid my bad english doesn't let me understand well ( particularly ironic senses) but......... are you making fun of me :( ?

Anyway I'm happy and honoured to exchange my opinions with you :lol::lol:

Logic

No, logic, not at all. I was kidding (making fun of) Stu -- not you. But it's certainly...great...to actually have a ref, an actual sporting official, of one of the Olympic sports. Of course, you must understand that most of the posters here are 'armchair Olympians or wannabees,' so there is a lot of jesting and kidding that goes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, logic, not at all. I was kidding (making fun of) Stu -- not you. But it's certainly...great...to actually have a ref, an actual sporting official, of one of the Olympic sports. Of course, you must understand that most of the posters here are 'armchair Olympians or wannabees,' so there is a lot of jesting and kidding that goes on here.

Thank you boss Baron and Stu, I don't want to appear too serious; I met hundreds of funny people all over the world ( I went across this planet for many years, perhaps too many) and I enjoyed to share my culture and experience with them, with all of them, young and old, rich and dropout, women B) living in Canada or Singapore, poor students from India....

But I like now to learn from you a different way to share interest and opinions, and perhaps you are right, I need to be more light ........... some time.

Beside, why Baron are you so interested in syncro swim

Take it easy

Logic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...