Rugby: Olympics boss promises no special favours

Prime Minister John Key with IOC president Jacques Rogge, who played international rugby for Belgium. Photo / Mark Mitchell

International Olympic Committee president and rugby lover Jacques Rogge can promise no special favours to sevens when it comes to deciding whether it will make the 2016 Olympics programme.

He also had bad news for those who would like to see the 15-a-side game at an Olympics, saying yesterday there were plenty of factors against it.

Mr Rogge is visiting New Zealand to attend the Oceania National Olympic Committee general assembly this week in Queenstown, where presentations will be made by the International Rugby Federation and other sporting bodies hoping to win selection for the 2016 Games.

The bidding cities will also make presentations at the southern resort.

The seven sports vying for two places available in 2016 are softball, baseball, golf, rugby sevens, roller sports, squash and karate. The 2012 Games in London will have 26 sports, but this will be expanded to the maximum cap of 28 four years later.

Presentations will be made in Queenstown by leaders of five of those codes - softball, baseball, sevens, squash and karate - and two of the seven will be chosen by the IOC executive board in August with the final decision to be made by its general assembly in October.

Mr Rogge said while his "love for rugby is intact" he was not involved in deciding which sports would be selected.

"I have a lot of sympathy but I do not vote."

Mr Rogge, 66, is a former world champion sailor who competed in two Olympics. He also won 10 caps for Belgium in rugby.

"I never found the joy in sailing that I did in rugby," he said.

Criteria involved in selecting the sports would include their universality, their ability to add value to the Olympics in contributing to "viewership at the stadium" and on television, their low cost in infrastructure and ease to organise.

"Ultimately they must fit into the Olympic programme."

That would be a problem for 15-a-side rugby, he indicated, saying the two weeks of an Olympic Games would not be enough time to conduct a proper tournament.

"You can't play rugby every third day."

There was also a big gulf in strength between the top rugby nations and the rest of the pack.

Also the Olympic movement did not recognise Scotland, Wales and England as separate countries.

However, there was a wider spread of strength in sevens, as evidenced at the weekend in the Hong Kong tournament in which New Zealand were knocked out of the quarter-finals by Kenya.

- NZPA