Baseball Approves Softball Merger; FINA Awards 2016 Short-Course World Champs

Baseball Approves Softball Merger

Leaders of the International Baseball Federation and International Softball Federation tell Around the Rings "we were always confident" in the unanimity of a postal vote to approve their joint bid for the 2020 Olympics.

"This overwhelmingly positive response from our national federations is not only validation of our plans to move forward with a joint IF, but also gives me great motivation and satisfaction as a leader to know my NFs are behind me," says Riccardo Fraccari, president of IBAF.

Monday’s close of balloting for baseball follows six weeks after softball approved the merger at an Oct. 30 extraordinary congress in Houston.

"We congratulate and applaud our partners at IBAF on this historic decision which puts the interests of all our athletes and our sports first," adds Don Porter, president of ISF.

Now it’s up to Fraccari, Porter and their newly engaged bid consultants Helios to finalize key aspects of the new federation – including a name – before their joint presentation to the IOC Program Commission on Dec. 19 in Lausanne.

ATR is told the name has already been agreed upon – but isn’t the International Baseball and Softball Federation, as some news sources had previously reported.

Baseball and softball are competing against karate, roller sports, wakeboard, wushu, sport climbing and squash for what will likely be just one open spot on the 2020 program.

"We are joining forces with our friends from softball in an effort to make our sports better and stronger," says Fraccari, "and we look forward to presenting an exceptional value proposal to the Olympic Movement for 2020 and beyond. "

FINA Awards 2016 "Short-Course" Worlds

Windsor, Canada will host the FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in 2016.

Voting topped the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of the FINA Bureau in Istanbul on the sidelines of the so-called "short-course" world champs for 2012.

The other bidders were Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

"I warmly congratulate the city of Windsor, the Aquatics Federation of Canada and Swimming Canada," FINA president Julio Maglione announced.

"I am sure we will have a great FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) in 2016."

In the meantime, the event heads from Istanbul to Doha in December 2014 when the Qatari capital will also stage the 3rd FINA World Aquatics Convention.

Notably, the FINA Bureau did not award the 2018 world champs to another of the bidders, which was a possibility. Instead, a separate process for 2018 will be organized at a later date.

Tennis Reconsiders Rules for Rio

President Francesco Ricci Bitti says the International Tennis Federation will consider two major tweaks ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics.

According to an Associated Press report, the ITF could add third-set tiebreakers to the Games, which would eliminate marathon matches like the 3-6, 7-6 (5), 19-17 semifinal in London that left Roger Federer less than 100 percent for his straight-set loss to Andy Murray in the gold-medal match.

Bronze-medal matches could also be eliminated, in which case the losers of the two semifinals would each get a medal, as was the case when tennis first returned to the Olympics in 1988.

The matches at the 2012 Games were "very balanced and very long and that ruins the scheduling somewhat," Ricci Bitti was quoted by the AP report.

In other tennis news, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams were named the men’s and women’s 2012 ITF World Champions on Tuesday. Djokovic lost in the bronze-medal match in London but won the Australian Open and ATP World Tour Finals, while Williams won Wimbledon and the US Open in addition to bagging both singles and doubles gold at the Olympics with sister Venus.

Written by Matthew Grayson.

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