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Tokyo. For Japan’s Mai Sato, watching all those gold medals being handed out in Vancouver is a bittersweet experience.

Sato knows the demands of being the best. In her world, blisters are the rule, bruises a way of life. And the training — five hours a day, five days a week.

The world champion in her sport, Sato is as athletic, dedicated and competitive as the Olympians, and she thinks it’s high time her discipline got some real recognition.

Still, pole dancing? In the Olympics?

Absolutely, say thousands of pole dancers and the growing number of international and national federations transforming what was once the exclusive property of strip clubs and cheap bars into a respectable, and highly athletic, event.

“I could definitely see pole dancing in the Olympics,” said Sato, who out-twirled a bevy of athletes from 11 countries at the second International Pole Dancing Fitness Championships in Tokyo last November. “I would love to win a gold medal.”

It is admittedly a high bar.

Established sports such as squash and cricket failed to make the Olympics, baseball and softball were recently cut, and the Inter­national Olympic Committee’s decision to end its support of demonstration sports after the Summer Games in 1992 made gaining a foothold, the way judo and taekwondo did, that much harder.

Also, pole dancing needs first to gain IOC recognition as a sport, which would undoubtedly be an uphill battle.

Hong Kong-based Ania Przeplasko, founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association, the sport’s supervisory body, believes Olympic recognition is only a matter of time and would be a victory for under­appreciated sports worldwide.

“There will be a day when the Olympics see pole dancing as a sport,” she said. “The Olympic community needs to acknowledge the number of people doing pole fitness now. We’re shooting for 2012.”

It’s already too late for any new sports to be added to the London Games, but the IOC decision to end its support of exhibition sports after Barcelona has not completely closed the door on Olympic hopefuls looking for a way to showcase their skills.

Beijing did it with the martial art of wushu, and pole-dance advocates note more unlikely sports have received IOC approval.

Tug of war, for example, was one of the early Olympic medal contests. Equestrian events are in the Olympics, but who owns a horse? Curling, which virtually no one pays any attention to in non-Olympic years, has become one of the Winter Games’ biggest darlings.

KT Coates, a leading pole dancer in Britain and the director of pole fitness school Vertical Dance, is leading the effort to make pole dancing a “test” event in 2012, and foresees a more formal pitch in 2016, when the Summer Olympics go to Rio de Janeiro.

“After a great deal of feedback from the pole-dance community, many of us have decided that it’s about time pole fitness is recognized as a competitive sport, and what better way for recognition than to be part of the 2012 Olympics held in London?” Coates wrote in a petition she is preparing for London organizers.

So far, the petition has about 4,000 signatures. Coates is shooting for 5,000.

Iina Laatikainen, one of Finland’s top pole teachers, likens pole dancing to skateboarding and snowboarding, two sports that have received serious mainstream attention without completely abandoning their rebellious roots.

“I actually see a lot of similarities in what pole dancing is now for women with what skateboarding used to be for men back in the day,” she said. “Pole dancing is definitely on its way to becoming a mainstream sport.”

Some pole dancers worry the sensual side of pole dancing, and its counterculture undertones, would be destroyed in an effort to clean it up for the Olympics. After all, would it really be the same without stilettos, a boozy audience and a red-tinted spotlight? How do you score for sexiness?

Others fear old-school pole dancers would be eaten alive by gymnasts, circus performers or Chinese acrobats, who have a long tradition of performing aerial tricks.

“I don’t need to see pole dancing in the Olympics,” said Wendy Traskos, co-founder of the US Pole Dance Federation. “I don’t think this is necessarily the path that we need to take as a sport.”

Traskos, a former competitive gymnast who lives in New York, believes pole dancing needs to do more groundwork before it shoots for the Olympics. Nevertheless, she said pole dancers on the medal podium was not as wild a dream as it might have seemed just five years ago.

“Now, when you talk about it, you don’t hear ‘like a stripper’ anymore,” she said. “You hear things like, ‘Oh, my friend takes classes for fitness’ or ‘Yes, I’ve seen it on “Oprah.” ’ ”



Associated Press