Softball President: Unfair Olympics Vote

(ATR) A week after softball lost the chance to rejoin the Olympics in 2012, International Softball Federation President Don Porter tells Around the Rings he is still fuming about the unfair way he says his sport was treated by the IOC.

By a three-vote margin, the IOC Session in Turin refused to reconsider the decision it took in Singapore last July to cut women's softball from the 2012 Olympics. Baseball, which also was cut from the 2012 program, also failed to win a move for reconsideration.

"The bottom line is that it was a political decision," Porter said by telephone from the ISF headquarters in Plant City, Florida.

"The IOC did not want to embarrass itself by going back on the decision they took in Singapore," says Porter.

"It's just not fair. It affects so many of our athletes."

Porter says lower funding for national federations and possible elimination from multi-sport games are among the ways the loss of Olympic status for softball will be felt. The end of softball's Olympic status in 2012 will also mean the loss of more than $4 million in funding for the sport coming from the IOC?s TV revenues for the London Games.

Porter expresses frustration over what he sees as the apparent disregard by IOC members of the contents of the IOC Program Commission report. That report was supposed to be used as the basis for their decision on which sports to cut or add to the Olympics.

Porter argues that the report indicates that softball is more global than some other sports remaining in the Olympics, that it has avoided drug problems afflicting other sports and has none of the judging controversies that trouble sports such as boxing, which remains on the Olympic program.

"We're going to keep at it," says Porter about the next opportunity for changes to the Olympic sports program that will come in 2009, this time for the 2016 Games.

But he says the process won't be any easier, with other sports jostling to get in as well, all banging up against the IOC's self-imposed cap of 28 sports. Porter says the IOC should reconsider that limit and open the process to review sports. He says sports should be given the chance to make presentations to the Program Commission and the IOC Session. Neither opportunity was presented last year when softball was cut, says Porter.

Softball still has important forums ahead to make the case for the return of the sport to the Games. In August, the world championships in Beijing will serve as the second test event of the 2008 Olympics. And then, two years later, the Games will provide a prominent stage from which the women of softball can ask the IOC, "why us?"