THE English football season, including Premiership matches, will have to be moved back a week in 2012-13 because of an Olympic rule that bars leading sports events taking place in cities hosting the Games.
Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG), said yesterday that discussions had taken place with the FA and “there was a recognition that matches can’t eat into the Olympic football tournament”.
LOCOG will shortly meet the Scottish FA because the Premierleague would normally start on August 4, the middle weekend of the Games.
The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics will be on July 27 and the Games end on August 12, although the 16- nation football tournament will stage its first match on July 25, probably at Hampden Park, Glasgow.
The final will be at Wembley on August 12, the day, in principle, when the FA Community Shield would be expected to be played. It now looks as if the whole English season will be delayed by a week, with that match being on August 19.
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London was able to cut £50 million from its budget when the IOC confirmed yesterday that baseball and softball would not be held in 2012, with the programme being reduced to 26 sports. Both sports had been dropped after 2008 at the IOC session in Singapore last July, but lobbying by the two international federations forced Dr Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, to put the issue back on the agenda. However, the members decided by a majority of 46-42 in the case of baseball and 47-43 in softball not even to put the request to the vote.
In Singapore, golf, karate, squash, roller sports and rugby sevens failed to be admitted to the programme.
The world’s leading competitors, meanwhile, want any of their rivals found guilty of serious drug offences to be banned for four years, doubling the present suspension. The athletes’ representative on the board of the World Anti- Doping Agency said yesterday that “everyone clean wants stronger bans”.
Rania Amr Elwani, the Egypt swimmer, said that she was aware that civil courts had often overturned longer suspensions than the statutory two years, but the authorities should now ensure that civil law was as robust as sport’s disciplinary process.