pwb, your avatar is working! :applaud:
swimnews.com/.../9587
Back in 2009, USA Swimming shelved a campaign to replace the 800m with 1500m out of respect for Adlington and the 2012 hosts after the swimmer made it clear that she would want the chance to defend her 800m crown at home. But as the clock stops on August 3, Americans will press the IOC to call time on "gender inequality" in the pool in favour of bringing the race schedule for men and women in line for the first time since the fairer sex made its swimming debut at Stockholm in 1912.
It's entirely logistics and cost. The IOC feels like they're at the limit in terms of athlete numbers that they can handle and run a Summer Games up to their high standards.
The Winter Olympics don't have the same space crunch. The runners would love to get cross country running into an Olympic program. Since many Winter Olympics are in relatively mild climates once you come down from the elevation of the ski and sledding venues, I've seen suggestions to have cross country running added as a winter olympic sport. There's room at the inns, and it would increase African participation (the Kenyans, Ethiopians and the like are glad to show up at a running event as long as money or global hardware is involved, no matter the weather) so there are a good number of people who say Why Not?
I've also heard some very minor chatter about possibly moving a few of the gymnasium sports like basketball or indoor volleyball over to the winter games in the name of better space allocation.
Do the women/men do the same distances in olympic running??
Almost. They run 100m hurdles instead of 110m. That might just be a recognition that generally men are taller, so their hurdles are spaced slightly farther apart. Women also do a heptathlon instead of a decathlon, and don't do the 50km race walk, just the 20km distance. (Men do both distances.) The USATF's list of qualifying standards shows all the events.
They're tried a couple times now to get the men's 800M and women's 1500M free added, but keep hitting up against the IOC's desire to keep a tight hold on the total number of athletes invited to the Olympics.
This would easily be solved by just having athletes qualify in one of the events but allowing them to swim both. Not ideal, but if that's the IOC's issue...
They're tried a couple times now to get the men's 800M and women's 1500M free added, but keep hitting up against the IOC's desire to keep a tight hold on the total number of athletes invited to the Olympics. I think FINA might have had to even carve out the open water slots from the pool swimmer quota/hard cap.
A substitution of events is probably far more likely to get passed by the IOC than something that might open up the door to more athlete slots in a specific sport.
Any idea why they want to cap the no. of swimmers and other athletes? Seems counterintuitive to me, isn't the olympic concept to create worldwide harmony thru sport - inclusion and not exclusion would seem the better choice. Suppose the logistics and cost could be the reason.
I've also heard some very minor chatter about possibly moving a few of the gymnasium sports like basketball or indoor volleyball over to the winter games in the name of better space allocation.The IOC would need to amend their charter to do this, since “The Olympic Games consist of the Games of the Olympiad and the Olympic Winter Games. Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports.”
But it would be interesting to watch basketball on ice:D
Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports.
Lots of arenas host both basketball and hockey, so they must put the basketball floor on top of the ice. You could argue that in these cases basketball is played on ice!
