Apart from Skateboarding, four more sports have been approved by the International Olympic Committee for 2020 Games and those are baseball/softball, sport climbing, surfing and karate. The Tokyo Games will now feature 33 sports and about 11,000 athletes.
Advertisement
Baseball and softball are coming back to the Olympics.
Baseball and softball were eliminated after the 2008 Summer Games.
World Baseball and Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari said following the vote, “today’s historic decision by the International Olympic Committee is a “home run” for the Olympics, our sport and the Tokyo 2020 Games”.
Inclusion of skateboarding, surfing, sports climbing, karate and a joint baseball/softball is expected to significantly boost local support for the Olympics.
‘With the many options that young people have, we can not expect any more that they will come automatically to us. “This is really exciting for us, and something we’ve been waiting for since the day they took the sport out of the Olympics”.
Tokyo 2020 is the first committee to use the changes set forth in this agenda. The IOC added the sports in an effort to add events that would be popular among younger athletes, especially in Japan.
Baseball was included in the Olympic program from 1992 while softball was included from 1996 but both were dropped after the Beijing 2008 Games.
From 2009 on, a series of presentations was made along with other sports to see who emerged at the top for an opening on the Olympic program at the Tokyo Games.
However, officials had to admit that they have yet to reach an agreement with Major League Baseball in the United States about the participation of its stars. This is a historical step in bringing the Olympics to younger people and reflecting the trend of urbanization of the sport.
The inclusion of softball and baseball was met with great excitement. According to Sport Climbing Australia, 25 million people around the world are sport climbing regularly, while the number of climbing gyms has increased by more than half from 2007 to 2012.
The addition of the two sports is only for the 2020 Olympics, and will not be binding to future Olympics sites.
Advertisement
Skateboarding is facing lawsuits between governing bodies, but rollersports chief Sabatino Aracu said that will be no issue in Tokyo where “we are sure to give to Tokyo 2020 an extraordinary spectacle”.
