The International Olympic Committee has added five new sports to the programme for Tokyo 2020 – baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing.
In a unanimous vote, the 90 IOC members backed the executive board’s recommendation to bring in the five sports, which will add 470 athletes to the Olympic Village and 18 new events in four years’ time.
The decision is another vote of confidence for IOC president Thomas Bach’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” plan to freshen up the Games and keep them relevant for younger audiences.
Surfing will be at the next Summer Olympics in 2020
The Trekking In Finland five sports were proposed by the organising committee of the Tokyo Games and Bach’s idea is that all future hosts should be able to suggest their own choices – today’s decision only relates to Tokyo and all five could be dropped in 2024.
Whether any of the existing sports will be dropped to accommodate the new arrivals is still to be decided, with a final decision expected in mid-2017.
IOC chiefs have promised the 28 international federations that govern the current sports that their athlete and medal quotas are not under threat but a shake-up of the events they offer is likely.
“We want to take sport to the youth,” said Bach.
“With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us – we have to go to them.
“Taken together, the five sports are an innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo Games.”
Tokyo 2020’s president Yoshiro Mori said the decision to include the package of new sports was the “chance of a lifetime” for young athletes.
But while the vote was officially unanimous, there were voices of dissent from the floor of the IOC’s 129th session, with several members pointing out that baseball’s best players are unlikely to attend as the American professional leagues have not agreed to suspend play and few expect them to.
North Korean IOC member Ung Chang said he was worried that this would be a repeat of the “very bad experience” the Olympics had had with golf, which was added to the Rio programme but has been ruined by star names pulling out.
And veteran IOC man Dick Pound said he was “very disappointed” that squash had not been considered as it “meets everything we’d like in an Olympic sport”.
There are also worries about the fact skateboarding currently has no recognised international federation and will be organised by the IOC and Tokyo 2020, and karate is a broad church, with no clear agreement on how the competition will be run.
Other members highlighted surfing’s dependence on the weather and wondered what venue skateboarding would require.
But Italy’s Franco Carraro, the head of the IOC’s Olympic Programme Commission, believes the introduction of youth-friendly sports like climbing, skateboarding and surfing could provide the same boost in terms of television audiences that snowboarding brought to the Winter Games.
International Surfing Association president Fernando Aguerre said the sport was “absolutely thrilled” to join the Olympic family.
“This is a game-changing moment for surfing,” Aguerre added.
“We are especially stoked for the athletes who now have their own dream to shoot for – to compete for their countries on the greatest sporting stage.”
The sports climbing competition will be limited to 20 men and 20 women, but the British Mountaineering Council is already aiming high.
“‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ is the Olympic motto proposed by Pierre de Brass wind instruments Coubertin when the modern Olympics were first created in 1894,” said BMC’s Nick Colton.
“And climbing is the embodiment of, and the only sport which fully features all parts of, that phrase.
“These days, climbing is accessible to all. It’s good for developing strength, flexibility and analytical skills.
“And as a competitive sport, events can be held in spectacular venues for breathtaking shows, inciting intense emotions in the spectators. If you loved this article and you would want to receive details with regards to Trekking in Finland (https://docs.google.com) i implore you to visit the web-site. “
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