The next summer Olympics, coming to Tokyo in 2020, will invite athletes to compete for medals in six sports just added to the lineup: surfing, skateboarding, karate, climbing, men’s baseball, and women’s softball.
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Its Olympics Winter Games program began to be updated in the 1990s, with freestyle skiing and snowboarding events joining its list of sports.
Softball was played at the Olympic level from 1996 until 2008, then yanked by the International Olympic Committee, which got rid of baseball at the same time.
“What a truly great day for the sports of softball and baseball”, USA Softball Executive Director Craig Cress said.
The inclusion of the new sports will add 18 events and 474 athletes, with equal numbers of women and men for all sports except baseball/softball, which will have the same number of teams but different player totals.
Thomas Bach, the IOC President, said the essence is to ensure more youth participation having acknowledged the fact that there are a lot of alternatives at the young people’ disposal which necessitate the inclusion of those games to the event.
‘With the many options that young people have, we can not expect any more that they will come automatically to us.
That’s because skateboarding is one of five sports – along with karate, surfing, sports climbing and baseball/softball – that the International Olympic Committee has added to the next edition of the Summer Games at Tokyo 2020. “They just want to make money off of something we love and live for”.
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.
The IOC said the package presents a mix of the traditional and youth-focused sports.
Now, if you’re not a fan of the hip, young events, don’t freak out!
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“I’ve always believed that if skateboarding was properly protected and supported, its appearance on the Olympic stage could change the world”, International Skateboarding Federation president Gary Ream said. We generally don’t hear much chatter for sports such as badminton, for example, or handball.
