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.
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The Organizing Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games proposed these five new sports in response to the new flexibility provided by the Olympic Agenda 2020. “We have to go to them”, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said.
Yoshiro Mori, Tokyo 2020 President, added that the movement to include the new games would afford the younger generation of athletes the rare opportunity to live their dreams of participating in the Olympic Games on the world stage and would also instigate them to success in sport and life.
Beachley, the chair of Surfing Australia, believes the country is well placed to capitalise on the sport’s involvement at an Olympic level.
In a major win for the proponents of both sports, baseball and softball will return to the Oympics in 2020. It became an official medal sport at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, and the United States earned gold in 2000 and bronze in 1996 and 2008.
Despite the unanimous vote, several members of the International Olympic Committee did voice a number of concerns.
Sport climbing has taken a long hard road to be recognized from its early days of just people climbing large rocks.
The American professional leagues have not agreed to suspend play for the Olympics and few expect them to.
Each Olympic cycle the executive board of the International Olympic Committee votes to add sports that have petitioned to be included based on criteria like “TV ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity”, according to ESPN.
The new sports are reportedly on a four-year rotation, so their inclusion in the IOC’s roster could theoretically expire after 2020. Instead, a total of 18 events and 474 athletes will be added. They are Baseball/Softball, Karate, Skateboard, Sports climbing, and surfing.
National team player James De Los Santos said that he would immediately begin preparing for the Games. “I’m just really excited that more of the world will get to share in such a cool sport that I love”.
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The decision comes as a first under Agenda 2020, a set of recommendations meant to make bidding for and hosting the Games more affordable and sustainable.
