The International Olympic Committee’s executive board voted Wednesday to approve a new process for reviewing which sports and disciplines are included in the Games, marking a formal step toward potential changes to the Olympic schedule. The board approved amendments to the Olympic charter that would let the full IOC membership vote on schedule changes, with future evaluations conducted at the discipline level rather than the sport level.
Some sports, like rugby sevens in the Summer Games, contain only one event.
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Others include many.
Those that add operational complexity—by requiring unique venues, for instance—or lack broad appeal could be removed from the core Games schedule.
“We should be able to have the flexibility, the agility to recognize new disciplines or events that are coming across us, our world globally at a rapid pace,” The committee’s president Kirsty Coventry said. “As we stand right now, we don’t have that process. We don’t have a clear process that follows criteria that’s transparent for everyone to get behind. And now we do.”
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The committee’s membership is scheduled to vote on the schedule changes when it meets later this month in Lausanne.
Coventry said the changes have been developed in consultation with international federations and national Olympic committees.
“The idea behind the process is not to just pull out a category or pull out an event or pull out a sport and put them on the side of the road and leave them there,” Coventry said. “The criteria allows for an event or a category to come back, and we will work with the federations to do that.”
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She added that the committee would work with national Olympic committees “to ensure that there is continuity from one edition to the next for their athletes, for their sports.”
“Now we know at the end of the day, not everyone will be happy, but I really think the feedback that we’re getting from the international federations is they understand,” she said.