Billiard seeking 2024 Olympic inclusion

Officials of world's billiard governing body are determined to push the cue sport into the Olympic program as they have already decided to bid for inclusion at the 2024 Games following failure for Tokyo 2020.

"Of course we'll continue to bid for the 2024 Olympics," World Pool-Billiard Association president Ian Anderson told Xinhua at the Women 9-ball World Champion which concluded in Guilin on Sunday.

World Confederation of Billiards Sport (WCBS), billiard's global governing body, submitted a first-ever Olympic bid for joining the 2020 Games in January, but the sport, competing against 25 others, did not make the shortlist of eight chosen by Tokyo Olympics organizers in June.

Anderson, however, said that the organizers and IOC officials were impressed by their presentation.

"We'll have a much improved chance for 2024," Anderson said. "But it also depends on how they choose the sports. The standard seems to me changing all the time."

"It is not very easy. A lot of sports are competing," he added.

Jason Ferguson, president of World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), had admitted that he actually didn't anticipate billiard's inclusion in the Tokyo Games but they had to "make their voice heard".

"I think 2024 is our chance," he said before billiard made the 2020 bid.

According to WPBSA and WCBS, pool is played in over 200 countries and regions, while snooker has developed from six events to the present 28 events worldwide.

Women 9-ball stars Kelly Fisher and Pan Xiaoting are both optimistic about their sport's chance of featuring at the Olympics.

Fisher, a multiple snooker world champion who plays pool now, believes that billiard deserves to be in the Olympics even "many years ago".

"I'm not sure why it's already not (in the Olympics)," the 37-year-old said. "Some sports already in the Olympics are not as popular as billiard."

Pan, 33, is just equally confident.

"It will be an Olympic sport eventually, sooner or later. To me, it's just about whether I am still able to play in the Olympics," said the first 9-ball world champion from China.

Chinese Taipei Billiards Federation executive scrutineer Simon Chang, a former pool player, also believes that it is just a matter of time.

"Thirty years ago when I said that billiard should be in the Asian Games, they thought I was crazy (but it came true)," he said. "So Why can't it be in the Olympics?"

Although admitting that billiard is declining in terms of popularity in some areas like Japan and the United States, he urged all the people engaged in the sport to "regard Olympic inclusion as the most important target and make joint efforts to push it".

Billiard first joined the Asian Games in 1998 and was in it until the 2014 Incheon Asiad. Endi