All 28 Sports Stay in Summer Games

LAUSANNE, Switzerland —  The International Olympic Committee, which two years ago was threatening to cut baseball, softball and modern pentathlon, announced Monday that all 28 sports now in the Summer Games will stay in the Olympics at least through the Beijing Games in 2008.

IOC President Jacques Rogge made the announcement in a meeting here with top officials from 28 international sports governing bodies.

Aldo Notari of Italy, president of the international baseball federation, called the decision “a good victory.”

“It’s a relief,” added Don Porter of Oklahoma City, head of the softball federation.

Klaus Schormann, president of the Monaco-based pentathlon federation, said, “When they say you are in for 2008, I do not lean back, have a cup of coffee or a glass of red wine. It gives me a much stronger motivation ... to promote our sport.”

The IOC has said it plans next year to review the status of each of the 28 sports for the 2012 Games.

In other developments:

* Ruben Acosta Hernandez of Mexico, head of the international volleyball federation since 1984 and one of the most influential sports officials in the Americas, said he is resigning his IOC membership.

He will stay on as president of the volleyball federation, known as FIVB. The IOC accepted his resignation, effective immediately.

Acosta, 70, has been embroiled for more than a year in a complex series of charges and counter-charges sparked by a dispute tied to the marketing rights to the 2002 volleyball world championship in Buenos Aires. The IOC ethics commission, among others, has been investigating and had been due this week to present a report to the executive board.

Acosta, who denies any wrongdoing, maintained in a letter to Rogge that he had “always fulfilled my functions with honor and correctness” and was resigning to avoid “any fruitless polemic in the run-up to the [Athens] Olympic Games.”

* The IOC announced it would accept transsexual athletes in the Games -- as soon as Athens, if any can qualify -- if an athlete can meet three conditions for competing under his or her new gender: The surgery must be complete; the “appropriate official authorities” must confirm “legal recognition of [the] assigned sex,” and the athlete must have completed at least two years of hormone therapy.

It was not immediately clear whether any such athletes might qualify for the Athens Games. The IOC took the action, officials said, to have a formal policy in place.

* The IOC is due to announce today how many of the nine cities vying for the 2012 Games will be kept in the race.

The current list is New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Havana, Leipzig, Germany, and Istanbul, Turkey. The 2012 winner will be selected in July 2005.

IOC President Jacques Rogge declined to say Monday whether the list would be trimmed to four or five, the IOC’s course in recent elections, or whether any city would be cut.