The vault has been opened! The envelope has been unsealed, and the IOC has released the sport vote totals from the programme review at their 117th session. Well, for one sport, anyway.
As I hoped, softball agreed to have their vote total released to all IOC members, so the IOC Executive agreed to let them have it. The result is astonishing. The sport was knocked out of the 2012 Olympics by a single vote. Actually, you might say by just half a vote; the result was 52-52, with one abstention.
The USOC and the International Softball Federation plan to work to have the decision revisited. Peter Ueberroth, Chairman of the USOC, claims that at least four IOC members were confused at the time of the vote, believing that they were voting against baseball. Now that's a well-informed voter!
I have been wanting to compare my detailed predictions with the actual vote totals. One result isn't much to go on, but maybe more will follow now that the cat is out of the bag. In the meantime, I have to admit that 52 votes is a lot more than I dreamed softball would get, although I did acknowledge that the method would underestimate team sport totals.
2 comments:
This just gets better and better. The San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that the abstaining voter was USA delegate Jim Easton.
Easton is the chairman of Easton Sports, and abstained due to his potential conflict of interest. In other words, softball was screwed out of its spot on the Olympic programme by a guy trying to do the honorable thing. What are the odds of that?
unbelievable!!!
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