OLYMPIC GAMES/Radical changes: In what threatens to be a root- and-branch pulling apart of the Olympic movement, International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials are meeting in Salt Lake City this week to decide on what steps to take concerning the future shape and size of the Olympic Games.

Irish Olympic Committee president Pat Hickey has been drafted onto one of the steering committees, the Olympic Studies Commission, which will investigate what changes need to be made in order to keep both the summer and winter games at an optimum size. The Sydney summer games last year were seen to be perfect in terms of numbers, although, with 15,000 athletes and 20,000 accredited journalists, the volume of media personnel is becoming unmanageable.

A number of radical changes will be investigated, including the moving of traditional summer disciplines such as boxing, gymnastics, judo and weightlifting into the Winter Olympic schedule. The trimming of events within sports is also up for discussion. Swimming, for example, has events which run from 50 metres up to 1,500 metres.

Hickey will join the group headed by Dick Pound, the Canadian lawyer who fronted the "sleaze commission" which exposed widespread corruption within the ranks of IOC members in the bidding process for Salt Lake City. Pound is also president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

"This commission is revolutionary because so many sports are trying to get onto the Olympic programme," says Hickey. "Rugby, for example, has already canvassed me to see what I can do. But this study is going to be exhaustive. It will be a root-and-branch pulling apart of the organisation.

"Everything is up for consideration. We'll be looking at summer sports such as boxing and others that can be played indoors to see if they can be switched. But what is really getting out of control is accreditation and technology costs. There is also an enormous dilemma about sports wanting to come in and how that will affect existing sports."

Traditionalists may baulk at proposed changes, but giganticism has become a pressing Olympic concern. Boxing has already cut back on the number of weight divisions, while more strict qualification standards have been enforced in order to keep numbers down.

"If it (expansion) continues the way it is going, only North America and Europe will be able to host the Olympics," says Hickey. "It is militating against Africa, South America and Asia. IOC president Jacques Rogge wants the games to be staged anywhere. We don't want the universality of the games to go out the window."

Hickey, who is also a member of two other IOC Commissions, Olympic Solidarity and the Marketing Commission, says he was asked to come on board to defend the interests of National Olympic Committees following his stance on the long-running dispute with Athletics Ireland over what clothing sponsor Irish athletes would use during Olympic Games.

A number of international federations are also on the Commission, including the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF), whose president, Lamine Diack will, along with the other members, defend his sport from whatever pruning or cost-saving measures are suggested.

"The word is that the Olympic Games are at a perfect level now," says Hickey. "The product has to remain in its current structure. There is no question of increasing the time period over which the games are run every four years, so something has to give."

The time-frame for the study to be completed will be decided at a preliminary meeting this week but whatever decision is made, no changes will implemented in the 2004 Games in Athens or 2008 in Beijing, but possibly in the 2012 Games.