BY ANNE-MARIE GARCÍA — Special for Granma International —

CONTRIBUTING to sports being more attractive for young and old alike and encouraging the practice of sports among minorities and developing countries are challenges facing the International Sport for All Congress, affirmed Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The sports official presided over the opening of the Congress together with Raúl Castro, Cuban first vice president.

"Less than one-third of young people in the world engage in physical activity, which is why we face the challenge of contributing to sports being more attractive for them, and for adults over 60," Rogge said.

Rogge, who arrived in the Cuban capital on October 31, promised in the name of the IOC to "spread the results of this Congress through international cooperation via the Sport for All Commission."

The IOC entrusted the organization of the Congress to Cuba "in recognition of a country that has made an extraordinary contribution to the international sports movement in recent years," Rogge commented.

The Congress, sponsored jointly by the IOC, the World Health Organization and the General Association of International Sports Federations, featured the central theme of "Risks and Benefits of Physical Activity."

José Ramón Fernández, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee, said that about 1,000 participants from 100 countries would participate in the event’s discussions.

Fernández emphasized that in Cuba, sports and physical culture are obligatory in school, and added that "the exchange of experience and knowledge in this Congress will benefit the development of sports throughout the world."

Rogge affirmed that during his stay in Cuba, he will use the opportunity to "take a look at the situation of sports here."

The IOC president’s visit comes at a time when there is a struggle underway to return baseball, Cuba’s national sport, to the Olympic program, after being excluded by that international body.

It is expected that Cuban sports authorities will discuss the issue with Rogge, but the latter was quite explicit when he commented that "baseball does not have the universality that soccer does."

Baseball was eliminated from the Olympic program for the 2012 Games by an IOC vote in July of 2005, and a discussion on its possible return to the Olympics in 2016 is to be discussed in a meeting to be held in 2009.