IOC President Rogge confirms the seven sports under consideration for addition to the program for the 2016 Olympics will be reduced to two at the IOC Executive Board meeting in August in Berlin.
Baseball, golf, karate, roller sports, rugby, squash and softball will make presentations in June to the Executive Board ahead of the August decision on which to cut.
""We are going to study carefully the seven applicant sports and out of the seven we are going to propose two sports to the IOC Session," he says. The vote will take place around October 6 at the Session in Copenhagen.
Softball Reacts Positively to IOC Shortlist News
ISF president: "With odds of 2 out of 7 to make shortlist, softball will re-double efforts to communicate incredible value to Olympic Movement"
Plant City, Florida (USA); 30th March 2009: International Softball Federation President Don Porter has pledged to re-double efforts to get softball reinstated to the Olympic Games Programme in 2016 following the news that the International Olympic Committee will shortlist only two sports for the IOC Session vote in Copenhagen in October.
The shortlist news was delivered by IOC President Jacques Rogge last week at SportAccord in Denver where a top BackSoftball campaign team were busy meeting Olympic Family decision-makers and opinion formers.
Mr. Porter said, "While the decision to cut the list to only two sports for a vote by 115 IOC Members was a surprise, it has not deflected the commitment behind, and focus of, our campaign. If anything it has given us further incentive to work even harder at communicating the incredible value that softball offers the Olympic Movement. We are greatly encouraged by the way IOC Members are reacting to how softball would help the Olympic Movement open up women's sport – especially in Muslim countries; they also like our global focus on youth and our 100% doping-free track record.
"But most of all, IOC Members appreciate that the Olympic Games would be the absolute pinnacle of our international competition structure; the whole softball calendar would peak every quadrennial with the Olympic Games. While I cannot comment on other sports, I can tell you that the Olympic Games would not be just another competition in an over-crowded calendar for softball. For millions of softball players around the world the Olympic Games would be the greatest honor and we guarantee that the world's best softball athletes would all commit to performing at the Olympic Games."
Meanwhile the BackSoftball Campaign has moved to their fifth continent in a month with a critical presentation to the Oceania National Olympic Committee Annual Assembly tomorrow in Queenstown, New Zealand. The presentation will be led by Ms. Low Beng Choo, ISF Deputy Secretary General, and Danielle Stewart, a 2008 Olympic softball bronze medalist from Australia. Ms. Low is also the Malaysian Softball Federation President, Softball Confederation of Asia Secretary General, and a member of the IOC Women and Sport Commission.
Softball was first featured in the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and last year's competition in Beijing, which was won by Japan, was hugely successful with a total attendance close to 180,000 and a continuation of the sport's excellent record of no positive drug tests in major competitions.
IT'S WORLD SOFTBALL DAY 2008-06-13 Today marks the fourth straight year that the International Softball Federation is leading the charge for worldwide celebrations of World Softball Day. In the lead-up to today's special day for the sport, the world governing body has been asking its 130 member federations to make plans for this occasion in their country. Articles remain available online from the first three years that World Softball Day was celebrated. Check out last year's, as well as what was written in2006, and the story for the first-ever World Softball Day. June 13 coincides with the date in 1991 that the International Olympic Committee approved women's fast pitch softball as an Olympic sport, effective with the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). An article on World Softball Day 2008 will appear in the September-December issue of the Official Publication of the International Softball Federation, World Softball magazine. As a sneak peek toward that story, the ISF is already aware of plans that had been made for Colombia and Nicaragua. The latter actually began activities last weekend (June 5-8), has another event planned for Sunday (June 15), and has one more tournament scheduled for two weeks from now – all as part of their World Softball Day celebrations. Colombia's efforts are significant as well. Their plans tie-in 2008 marking 50 years of softball in that country. They are issuing a commemorative magazine as a result. Now that you're on our website and have read this article and since the occasion is falling on a Friday this year, go out now and play ball (or organize or watch or officiate) – it's World Softball Day! |
‘Saving Softball—The Jamie Gray Story’
One Girl’s Fight to Reinstate Softball for the 2016 Olympic Games
Like most teenage softball players, Jamie Gray was devastated to learn that the International Olympic Committee had voted to eliminate her sport from the 2012 Olympic Games. But unlike the rest, she decided to do something about it. Watch this inspiring true story of a 13-year-old softball player by clicking the icon at left.
14-year-old fights to get softball reinstated for the 2016 Games
BY ETHAN J. SKOLNICK | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
March 12, 2008
Cat Osterman remembered her. Monica Abbott, too. Crystl Bustos, her favorite, gave her a warm hug.
Last Tuesday marked the first time Jamie Gray had seen her heroes in person since October at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, when she first solicited their autographs, participated in their clinic, distributed stickers and familiarized them with her cause. By now, the Delray Beach resident with braces had become a celebrity of sorts herself—Web site creator, video star, screenplay reader.
So after the barnstorming U.S. Softball team beat Florida International University 14-0 in an exhibition at Hollywood's Osceola Park, the 14-year-old catcher felt comfortable making the rounds and her pitches. She told the U.S. coach, Mike Candrea, who also coaches Arizona, that she was his future catcher.
The message for Olympic players?
"I told them that they were playing for girls like me," Gray said. "I told them that they need to win and they need to help save it, because girls like me have a dream of playing in the Olympics."
That currently stands as a dream deferred, and not simply because Gray remains a few years short of eligibility. In 2005, the International Olympic Committee voted to cut baseball and softball starting with the 2012 Olympic program, the first sport eliminations since the removal of polo in 1936. The vote on softball was 52-52, with a majority required for retention—a majority that would have been achieved had American equipment manufacturer Jim Easton not abstained because of his concern about a conflict of interest.
Even tougher to take?
That Team USA's dominance apparently contributed to the disappointing tally. The American squad has cruised to the gold medal in all three Olympic competitions (1996, 2000 and 2004). In 2004, opponents scored a total of one run in seven games. The team, largely intact, is heavily favored to win in Beijing in August.
Gray and her mother, Tammy, will be there, cheering, after having won an Olympic ticket lottery. The irony, however, is that those victories are likely to do little to contribute to softball's reinstatement for the 2016 Games because they may just reinforce the contention of European voters that the sport is too tilted toward the Americans.
The reality is that Gray—and girls like her—may prove even more important to softball than softball is to her.
And, to her, the sport is everything.
Gray also plays soccer, basketball and volleyball at Don Estridge High Tech Middle School in Boca Raton. She has a 175 bowling average and she plans to start running track as well.
Softball, however, is her obsession. In her room, you'll find bobblehead dolls of Major League Baseball players, a framed photo of Red Sox and former Marlins star Mike Lowell and a slew of trophies she's earned playing for the Caloosa Park Crush and other teams. There's also a ball that lost its laces when she smacked it for her first grand slam. In the living room, you'll find a large photo of her, from the first time she wore catcher's gear in a game.
"We were without a catcher, and so I tried it," Gray said. "And right when a girl tried to steal on me, I threw her out, and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is fun!'"
As for the day of that Olympic vote...
Not so much fun.
"I found the information on the Internet, and I couldn't even tell her," said her mother, Tammy. "So I just wrote the Web site on a piece of paper and handed it to her. And she went and looked at it. And she's like, 'No, Mom, no, this is my dream. What can I do? What can I do?'"
Mom was a catcher for her high school softball team. Dad pitched in high school.
"But I was never as good as she is," Tammy Gray said. "I kid you not, when she first started playing baseball at YMCA in Boca, and we had to move her out of the YMCA sports and put her into city ball because we were afraid she was going to hurt someone."
Tammy wanted to help her daughter get softball back into the Olympics for 2016. She asked a friend to design a Web site so Jamie could start a petition.
That petition, on savesoftball.com, now has more than 5,200 signatures, including some from athletes abroad. The Web site also links to a six-minute documentary about Jamie on TheSoftballChannel.com.
Many in the softball world know her story. A movie producer recently sent a screenplay titled Fast Pitch, about high school girls playing softball. Jamie, who will attend Park Vista High, deemed it "really cool" that someone sought her opinion.
Nothing would be quite as cool, however, as the reinstatement she seeks. She will be 22 in 2016. The Olympics could be in Chicago, close to where her mother was raised. She wants to be on the field.
What will she do if her cause succeeds?
"I don't know," Jamie said. "Jump for joy, start crying. I'll call everybody, I'll call and be like, 'I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it!' I'll run outside and scream 'I did it' at the top of my lungs."
The members of Team USA should recognize her voice.
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