Olympic vote would shake up its lineup

Baseball, softball and the ever-fascinating modern pentathlon are on the Olympics' endangered list.

They may survive a proposal to eliminate them at the International Olympic Committee meeting this week in Mexico City, but their future in the games is shaky. IOC president Jacques Rogge is determined to shrink the games, or at least contain them.

"The games have reached a critical size which may put their future success at risk if the size continues to increase," says a preliminary report released this week by the Olympic Games Study Commission. "If unchecked, the current growth of the games could discourage many cities from bidding to host the games."

Rogge and the commission, headed by Canadian member Dick Pound, are on the right track. They just might want to take it a little further, really probe the possibilities of a quick Olympics.

Track and field pared down to two events: 100-meter dash and the decathlon. That would settle the issue of the world's fastest humans and world's greatest athletes.

Swimming and diving: one sprint, one plunge.

Kick out basketball (a reshuffling of NBA stars), boxing (a judging mess), tennis (the Grand Slam is enough), weightlifting (a den of steroid users) and whittle down events in everything else.

With a little judicious pruning, the Olympics can be over in a week.

The Winter Games could be done in less time. Knocking out the judges in figure skating -- the winner is the one who makes the most jumps in three minutes -- getting rid of biathlon and skipping most of the Nordic events is a good start.

The advantages of a slimmed-down Olympics are numerous: lower costs, less scandal, fewer worries.

Or maybe Rogge has it all wrong. Maybe the Olympics should pump itself up with all manner of sports, from the extreme to the sublime -- motocross and rock climbing, bowling and bullriding, ballroom dancing and skydiving, billiards and chess. Rather than just two weeks of fun and games, the Olympics could grow to four or six or become a veritable yearlong world festival.

If fans, instead of IOC members, were voting, the Olympics might have a whole different look. It might look more like what's already on TV every Sunday, thanks to the miracles of cable and satellite.

Consider the lineup of sports shows this past weekend, some of which were taped on other days and repackaged, not unlike the Olympics:

Basketball, football, hockey, boxing, equestrian, skiing, figure skating, Gravity Games, kickboxing, golf, rodeo, bowling, thoroughbred racing, wakeboarding, soccer, and, to stretch the definition of sports, pro wrestling and cheerleading.

If you missed the equestrian, you missed seeing horses jump over a fence between giant bottles of Budweiser.

If you missed the rodeo, you missed hearing bullriding champ Wiley Peterson praise God and the bank that sponsored him.

If you missed Ohio State beat Michigan on Saturday, you had a chance to see the 1972 and 1977 games between those schools on Sunday.

Maybe the Olympics should just keep growing, feed the insatiable appetites of sports junkies around the world.

Some might say the Olympics don't need baseball and baseball doesn't need the Olympics, both of which are true. Baseball stadiums run up construction costs unless the games are held in the United States or one of very few other countries, and major league teams aren't sending off their million-dollar players for Olympic glory in midseason.

But that isn't stopping those pushing to keep the sport in the games and it probably won't matter to the IOC.

The IOC probably may vote on baseball, softball and modern pentathlon this week and could decide to just pass on the issue until next year, pushing the possible elimination of the sports from 2008 to 2012, at the earliest.

Which would be wonderful news for the dozens of modern pentathlon fans.

Question: What is modern pentathlon? Probably only one in a million people who watch the Olympics knows. Answer: Shooting, swimming, fencing, riding, running. I had to look it up.

The IOC's program commission suggested dumping modern pentathlon, claiming it, like baseball and softball, lacked global appeal. The IOC just has to be a little more patient. After all, the sport has been around only since 1912, when the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, cobbled together five events he thought comprised the skills of good soldiery.

The soldier, de Coubertin figured in his pre-World War I fantasy, has to deliver a message. He starts out on the back of an unfamiliar horse, is forced to dismount and fight a duel with swords. He escapes, but is trapped and has to shoot his way out with a pistol. Then he swims across a river, and finishes his assignment by running a long distance through the woods.

Some might consider that a bizarre premise for an Olympic sport. These days, though, the modern pentathlon might fit the times more than ever.

Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.