Paul Lewis: Which sport to cut and which to keep?

Elton John once spent $73 million in 20 months. "I'm not a nest egg kind of guy", was his explanation at the time.

The Olympic movement has also traditionally overseen a preposterously profligate event. London hosted the last Olympics in 2012, with a bill of $18 billion, or $300 a head for everyone in the UK.

Small wonder the IOC have passed in principle president Thomas Bach's 40 yet-to-be-ratified reforms including the right to hold the Games in more than one city and measures to modernise Olympic sports, making them (and the IOC) more credible to younger audiences.

It's hard to be critical. Many youngsters may well see the Olympics and in particular the IOC as a bunch of old fogeys mired in the past, reclining comfortably on dubiously-feathered nests while hosts face crippling costs. Making the Olympics cheaper, more relevant and less controversial is a smart move.

The kicker comes when you contemplate the money game and which sports have to make way for those more modern. Already baseball and softball have been earmarked, and new-age sports like climbing, skateboarding, rollersports (inline speed skating), squash, wushu or kung fu have tried to get into the 2020 Games in Japan. Wrestling, a foundation sport that harks back to ancient Greece and the Olympian ideals, was supposedly set to be dropped - but a strong PR campaign saw wrestling included.

If these seem contradictory, you'd be right - modernisation on the one hand, people in leotards writhing on the ground in an ancient discipline appreciated only by other wrestlers, on the other.

Sports said to be sized up for the chop include swimming and its plethora of medals, slalom canoe, badminton and even basketball. Athletics are also said to be under consideration, including the triple jump, shot put, 20km or 50km walk and, astonishingly, revered events like the 10,000m and 200m.

Relevance and future-proofing the Olympics is one thing but the almighty dollar will still speak loudest. The IOC are also setting up their own TV network - costing $714 million - which will need significant returns for such Eltonesque spending. But if you're looking for credibility, you might try tidying the backyard before building a fancy new pergola.

Look at the scandal of systemic track and field doping in Russia. A German TV documentary has alleged doping in Russia is common and test results routinely falsified, with officials covering up transgressions.

The World Anti-Doping Agency can't afford to have staff in every country and rely on national anti-doping agencies. This can lead to issues, especially in dodgy regimes.

To have WADA staff drug testing in every country, covering every sport, would cost more than $130m a year. WADA's budget is about $35m a year which, when placed next to the IOC's $714m TV network, London's $18 billion and NBC's $5 billion to televise the Games until 2020, clearly means the money is there; just not in the right pockets.

The IOC devote $13m to anti-doping. It's a lot but like building an aircraft but without wings.

If I was athletics, I'd be keen to tidy up my sport. If you are looking at which sports/events might be dumped to fit in the brash newcomers, the following criteria might be uppermost:

Sports which create controversy or lack of credibility because of doping - track & field, weightlifting, cycling, race walking.

Sports which are old-fashioned or minority interest and don't make good TV - wrestling, badminton, canoe slalom, fencing, shooting (also not PC now), synchronised swimming, water polo.

Sports which have no place in the Olympics as the pinnacle of their game is elsewhere - football, golf, tennis.

Sports which offer too many gold medals, confusing audiences without specialist knowledge - swimming, gymnastics, equestrian.

Plain, old silly sports - beach volleyball; voyeurism, really.

So, suggestions for dropping sports if we have to make room for new ones? Weightlifting, wrestling, fencing, shooting, synchronised swimming, swimming (1500m, 800m, relays) football, tennis, golf, walking and beach volleyball. That's enough to be getting on with, even if Bach is a former fencing gold medallist and unlikely to ditch his sport - an outmoded martial art which glorifies stabbing people - being dropped. Well, we didn't say self-interest wouldn't play a part.