Mexico City, Nov 25: Tiger Woods and his colleagues will probably have to postpone their Olympic debut by four years because legal reasons and opposition from within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are in the way of reshuffling the games' programme for the 2008 edition. IOC chief Jacques Rogge had planned to do away with baseball, softball and modern pentathlon at the 2008 games in Beijing and introduce golf and rugby instead.

But there are serious doubts within the IOC whether such a change on short notice is legally possible while others simply want to keep the three endangered sports in the programme. Rogge plans to present a final independent report on the issue to the IOC executive board today. The executive board will then report to an extraordinary IOC session scheduled for Wednesday through Friday.

Because the 2008 games are less than seven years away, the changes of programme seemingly need a two-third majority from the session. Such a majority is highly unlikely and should force Rogge to postpone the changes until 2012 - which would only require a simple majority from the session.

Germany's Thomas Bach, an IOC vice-president who heads the IOC legal commission, said the Olympic charter was ''not water-tight'' to allow changes for 2008.

Bureau Report