SOFIA - Snooker as well as two other cue sports - carom billiards and pool - deserve to be part of the Paris 2024 Olympic program, the secretary general of the newly formed World Snooker Federation (WSF) said on Wednesday.

Snooker unsuccessfully bid for a place at the Tokyo 2020 Games, where baseball and softball, karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding were added to the Olympic lineup.

"We hope that, with the support of the French federation and the French Olympic Committee, we'll find a way to bring billiard sports to the Olympics," World Snooker Federation chairman Maxime Cassis said in Bulgarian capital Sofia.

"First of all, we have to decide if we select only one of the three sports or select the three of them. The plan is not established.

"We're ready to support any of the sports and we have to work together. We have to listen to the people who select it."

Cassis also said snooker in particular has expanded rapidly in recent years and that its inclusion in the Olympic program would be "the biggest achievement of the sport".

"Our dream is to reach the Olympics, this is a big dream of every snooker player," he said. "Everybody will gain from it."

Snooker officials said the sport is watched by nearly half a billion people worldwide and played competitively in almost 100 countries.

The summer Olympic program currently includes 28 core sports after golf and rugby sevens were added ahead of the Rio 2016 Games.

Reuters

(China Daily 11/10/2017 page24)