The strip club mainstay pole dancing – known as much for its sensual moves as its rigorous athletic side – may be headed for the Olympics.

A group of pole-dance advocates is hoping for a “test” event in 2012 and a more formal pitch four years after that, in Rio de Janeiro, according to The Associated Press.

KT Coates, a prominent pole dancer in England and director of Vertical Dance, is leading the Olympic push.

“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,” she said in a petition she’s preparing for organizers of the London Olympics.

Coates added that the prospective sport “has the wow factor.”

While her petition now has about 4,000 signatures, she is hoping to add 1,000 more.

Advocates of pole dancing say other even more unlikely sports have gotten the approval of the International Olympic Committee. Tug of war was an early Olympic medal contest, and curling is now huge at the Winter Games.

Yet, well-established sports like cricket and squash haven’t managed to get a spot for themselves at the Olympics, and baseball and softball recently got the ax. The International Olympic Community would need to recognize pole dancing as a sport, which could prove to be an uphill battle.

But pole-dance enthusiasts are hopeful about their chances to go for the gold.

“It’s just a matter of time before pole dancing gets Olympic recognition,” says Ania Przeplasko of Hong Kong, founder of the International Pole Dancing Fitness Association.

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

Some dancers aren’t so sure about pole dancing at the Olympics because they worry that the sensual aspect of the discipline would be destroyed, and that old-school pole dancers might be pushed aside by gymnasts, circus performers and Chinese acrobats who could easily pick up the moves.

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

But Traskos notes that the notion of pole dancers competing for Olympic medals isn’t as farfetched as it was five years ago.

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

LONDON — A renowned debating society at Cambridge University said Monday it would offer pole dancing tuition to members, in a building more used to the presence of international statesmen.

The Cambridge Union Society said female students would be offered lessons in the sensuous dance more often associated with strip clubs than the historic chambers of one of the world’s top universities.

Lessons would be given in the Blue Room at the union’s building, which is more commonly used for debates, said the society.

The organisation has welcomed countless world leaders in the almost 200 hundred years it has existed, but now also puts on a range of other activities.

Speakers to have addressed students include wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, former US president Theodore Roosevelt and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

A Cambridge Union spokeswoman defended the move, saying there was “nothing degrading” about it.

“We are of the opinion that classes like these are a way of empowering women, as well as being a fantastic way to exercise and have fun together with other women,” she said.

“If an intelligent, independent woman wishes to learn a particular form of dance in respectable surroundings, we see nothing degrading in that.”