Tatiana Weston-Webb competes in the finals of the U.S. Open of Surfing on July 31, 2016, in Huntington Beach. There will be an equal number of teams for baseball and softball, but different team sizes because baseball teams have 24 players while softball has 15. The International Olympic Committee knows it won’t win new friends and influence younger people by stacking on more old-school sports, so it has gone and added four extremely cool new sports to the Olympic program, beginning with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
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Skateboarding is not a “sport” and we do not want skateboarding exploited and transformed to fit into the Olympic program.
“Youth today has so many options for their leisure time that you just can’t wait for young people to come to sport.
The recommendation to give Organising Committees the flexibility to propose new sports for their edition of the Games was meant to put even more focus on innovation, flexibility and youth in the development Olympic programme”, said the IOC in a statement.
The IOC voted to include baseball, softball, surfing, skateboarding, karate, and sport climbing.
“We are excited about the IOC’s announcement restoring Baseball and Softball to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo”.
Women’s soccer and women’s softball are two hugely popular sports in the United States, and both have had global success. Olympic officials say one of the biggest decisions in including the five sports is to bring a younger generation to the world’s greatest sporting stage, while hopefully inspiring them to achieve their best in sports and life.
Tokyo 2020 chief Yoshiro Mori, speaking at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, pledged to urge top athletes to compete in Japan.
The addition of the sports will not affect athlete or quota spots.
Beachley, the chair of Surfing Australia, believes the country is well placed to capitalise on the sport’s involvement at an Olympic level.
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The additional sports will add 18 events and 474 athletes to the program. The Tokyo metropolitan government will continue working with the organizing committee for the success of the Olympics, she said. “Surfing continues to grow and seeing it reach the Olympic level is really exciting”, said John John Florence, current WSL #2.
