The Philippines’ best sport will likely never make the Olympics. Here is why.
It’s a dream of mine to see pocket billiards in the Olympics. As the sport where Filipinos have excelled more than any other, it would represent an extremely good chance for us to win a second gold medal. But the journey to the five rings will be a long and arduous one that may never reach its destination.
In the Paris 2024 Olympics, there will be 32 sports in total. Breakdance, also known as breaking, is making its debut, while baseball has joined the likes of tug-of-war, polo, and many other former Olympic sports on the sidelines. Baseball was in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, along with karate. Baseball will return to the games in Los Angeles in four years’ time.
The fluidity of Olympic sports is evident. Golf was brought in for the Rio de Janeiro games in 2016. Rugby returned after a decades-long hiatus, although the seven-a-side version, instead of the full 15-a-side form, is being held.
In general, the Olympics doesn’t like adding sports without taking some out. That makes it the exact opposite of the Southeast Asian Games, that biennial behemoth featuring 580 events in 36 sports. In the SEA Games, new sports get added all the time, especially those boutique sports that the host country is good at, like Cambodian chess, contested in last year’s games in Cambodia.
That means that for pocket billiards to make a splash in the Olympic Games, we would need to muscle out other sports. Easier said than done.
But some progress has been made. Since 1998, the sport has been recognized by the International Olympic Committee via the World Confederation of Billiards Sports. The WCBS is an umbrella organization that encompasses the three main variants of stick-and-ball games played on a table, namely snooker, carom, and pool or pocket billiards. The WCBS has tried to get into the Olympics on several occasions but has failed.
There is a dizzying array of different billiards games. The 8-ball and 9-ball that Filipinos are most familiar with are known as pool, or American Pool in the United Kingdom. (Tell a Brit to play “pool” and he will show you a smaller table with red and yellow balls instead of stripes and solids, a game known as English Pool.)
Carom is played on pocketless, ten-foot tables. There are different kinds of carom, but three cushion is the most popular. And then there is snooker, using small balls on a huge twelve-foot table.
This is part of the problem: there are many kinds of billiard games. We haven’t even mentioned other arcane disciplines like English billiards, played with snooker equipment, which gives you points for deliberately scratching a ball, and Chinese 8 ball, also referred to as Heyball. In Heyball, you play with regular pool-sized balls but on a table with rounded pockets like snooker. I could also talk about Russian billiards, also known as pyramid, which uses massive balls that only just fit into a pocket. But you get the picture.
With so many forms of billiards, it is not clear which discipline you would choose to make the Olympics. It would be neat to have the pool that we know, especially since it is played all over the world. But snooker is incredibly popular in the UK, China, and all over the British Commonwealth. Meanwhile, Heyball has been seeing such dramatic increases in prize money that even Filipino pros have been joining those tournaments. You also can’t ignore carom, which is popular in France, Vietnam, South Korea, Turkey, and Latin America.
Ideally, all three major disciplines would get the five-ring nod. But in the small likelihood cue sports would get in, it’s probably only one. But there are other considerations that make putting cue sports into the Olympics difficult.
In this fascinating article, the writer outlines the difficulties in sorting out an Olympic future for pool.
In it, Benny, the author, theorizes that pool suffers from a lack of appeal to younger people, a less-than-stellar reputation, and a lack of sponsorship opportunities. You don’t need special clothing to play pool, and although you do need a pool stick, they don’t exactly lend themselves well to sponsor logos. He also theorizes that the commercial value of having billiards in the Olympics might be limited, and that its appeal as a broadcast support is also too niche.
A focus on youth-oriented sports is likely what helped sports like breaking get their Olympic slot in Paris.
The author also thinks that the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA), the governing body of pool, could go it alone and try to get into the Olympics without the WCBS. The WCBS is composed of the WPA, the Union Mondial de Billard, which handles carom, and the International Billiards and Snooker Federation for snooker and English billiards. The author thinks the WPA can approach the IOC on their own to get into the games. But that seems like a long shot, especially since the WPA is already connected with the WCBS.
What’s not helping is that the WPA is in conflict with Matchroom Sport, the UK-based sports promotion company that produces some of the biggest events in pool, like the World 9 Ball Championship and the US Open. The WPA has its own events and so does Matchroom. A relatively minor sport like pool can ill afford a civil war.
The IOC does give cue sports a bit of a consolation in the form of the World Games. Organized by the committee, the World Games is an Olympic Games-style event for non-Olympic sports, including sports that were in the Olympics once but have dropped out. A sort of NIT to the Olympics’ NCAA March Madness for sports. The next World Games will take place in Chengdu, China, next year.
The next World Games will feature a bunch of sports that are off the beaten path, like women’s flag football, petanque, dragon boat racing, floorball, Muay Thai, and wakeboarding. Once again, carom, pool, and snooker will also be contested.
So this is nice, but in the end, cold comfort. Nothing beats the Olympics.
Do cue sports, and more specifically, pool, belong in the Olympic Games? Call me biased, but I certainly believe so. And my logic is simple: it’s a sport that everyone knows and almost everyone has played.
Few of us have ever dangled on parallel bars, or thrown down someone else in judo, or stabbed an epee at an opponent, or heaved a javelin across a field. But almost everyone reading this has, at one time or another, played billiards.
It has an added meaning for me and many Filipinos because it is our best sport. No other sport apart from boxing can lay claim to as many Filipino world champions as pool.
The WCBS has to play its cards right. It has already been out-maneuvered by the World Dancesport Federation with this year’s introduction of breakdancing, or breaking. Breaking was part of the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Argentina and then got the green light for Paris soon after. I am sure breaking is a sport of tremendous skill and beauty, but it surely cannot possibly be any more worthy of an Olympics berth than pocket billiards.
But the roadmap is clear: billiards has to figure out how to get more young people into their sports.
For now, billiards will have to wait. Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Summer Games and they will insert some sports like flag football, squash, lacrosse, and cricket. No cue sports made the cut.
But hopefully, someday, billiards will take its rightful place in the Olympics. The WCBS affirms this objective on its website, stating that “our aim is to bring these sports into the Olympic arena and unite the global Billiards community.”
I am hoping against hope that this doesn’t take too long.
Banner image from Carlo Biado on Instagram.
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