The 18 new sports will welcome 474 new athlete’s to the games for their chance at winning a gold medal.
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With the 5 new sports, the total number that will be in competition in Tokyo is now 33.
The International Olympic Committee unanimously rubber-stamped the decision taken by its executive board in June, approving the inclusion of skateboarding, surfing, sports climbing, karate and a joint baseball/softball bid, which is expected to significantly boost local support for the Olympics.
Tokyo organisers recommended the inclusion of these new events, with the International Olympic Committee approving them in the hope that it will attract more youth to the games in the future.
Not sure how the whole drug-testing thing is going to work out, but hey, anyway, good news for those who wanted it: Skateboarding is now an Olympic sport!
Gary Ream, president of the Skateboard Federation, is grateful to the Tokyo 2020 Skateboarding Commission and the Federation Internationale de Roller Sports (FIRS), as they collaborated to make including Skateboarding in the 2020 Olympics a success.
International Olympic Committee members voted 85-0 in favor but not before some concerns about baseball, whose US-based stars are not confirmed for the Games.
Baseball will have a six-team tournament in Tokyo, short of the eight-team format sought by officials from the sports global federation. He is also part of the group that is attempting to bring a Major League team back to Montreal. The games will be played at a shared venue In Yokohama.
It is a great pleasure to see the five sports added for the Tokyo Olympics, said Yoshiro Mori, former prime minister and now head of the organizing committee of the 2020 Games. 9 and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said the dates of are “not ideal”. Both sports were once in the Olympics but were eliminated in 2008, the Beijing Olympics.
Coming in 2020, sports that you actually give a shit about!
Nippon Professional Baseball Organisation chief Katsuhiko Kumazawa said he was relieved to hear the decision and pledged to stage a competition in Tokyo that will electrify fans. “Our goal is appear permamently and to have the best players as possible”.
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It however quoted IOC President, Thomas Bach, as saying: “We want to take sports to the youths”.
