Mixed tennis and more women's cycling in 2012 Olympics

LAUSANNE — London 2012 will host a mixed doubles tennis event for the first time in the Olympic Games as well as more women's cycling, the International Olympic Committee announced Thursday.

But the changes, made in a bid to increase the prominence of women's sport, will spell the end of the individual cycling track pursuit races at the Olympics, the IOC said after an executive board meeting.

The changes will increase the number of women cyclists at the Olympics from 35 in Beijing to 84 -- 45 percent of the track cyclists instead of about a fifth - by introducing more track events for women.

The changes were made under a "commitment to increase women's participation," the IOC said in a statement, although it will make little difference to tennis.

"The inclusion of a tennis mixed doubles event will not increase the current number of athletes and will bring added value to the Olympic programme by providing another opportunity for men and women to compete together on the same field of play," the IOC added.

In cycling, women will compete in sprint, team sprint, team keirin, team pursuit and new omnium events, while individual pursuit, points race and madison events will be dropped altogether

IOC president Jacques Rogge defended the changes, underlining that they followed a recommendation from the International Cycling Union.

"Of course the concerned riders regret that, this is perfectly understandable, but the board of UCI considered that the new format will be far more appealing," said Rogge.

Despite the bid to increase the place for women's competition, the IOC has so far turned down women's ski jumping in the Winter Olympics.

Rogge argued that the cycling and ski-jumping issues were different, claiming that there were too few women involved in ski jumping at international level and that the standard for most of them lagged too far behind men.

"We considered that there was not enough quality... but we are considering definitely to include them in Sochi should the progress they are making were to continue," Rogge explained.

"We'll include them as well in the first Youth winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012, so that generation will hopefully be jumping in Sochi." http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gT1hYwhEuq0GtZ0b5pEVB8brrJ-Q