The 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo will include some of the sports most associated with Southern California.
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Baseball and softball have been off the program since the 2008 Games.
The IOC spoke of “the biggest change in the modern Olympic programme”, and Tokyo organizing committee director general Toshiro Muto was delighted. We will now plan how to upgrade our program to help our athletes qualify for the Olympics. “I know many people will expect to me win the gold medal, but for now, I just want to enjoy the sport, not thinking about medals”. “We have to go to them”, said IOC President Thomas Bach in the statement.
“Today’s (Wednesday) vote was the culmination of a two-year process that began with the unanimous approval of the IOC’s strategic roadmap in 2014”.
The additional sports in Tokyo will not impact the athlete or event quotas of existing Olympic sports or be binding on future host cities. “We’d anticipated that we had a really good shot at getting back in, given that baseball and softball are so popular in Japan”. Counting softball/baseball as one (which the International Olympic Committee does), there’ll be five new sports in Tokyo, which will mean an extra 18 events and 474 athletes. Now there are about 25,000 active baseball and softball players in upwards of 300 clubs under the DBV umbrella.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said of the first-time events four years from now will be huge in bringing in a wave of youth and new audience.
International Olympic Committee members unanimously agreed to introduce the package of sports, a decision that had been widely expected.
Karate could use the Nippon budokan – home of Japanese martial arts – and will have two events (one men’s and one women’s) for kata and three weight classes for kumite.
Meanwhile, sports climbing will also be held in urban Tokyo, it will feature men’s and women’s competitions for bouldering, lead and speed combined.
Also approved for inclusion were karate, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing, in an effort to appeal to a younger audience. “This is a huge moment for professional surfing and further highlights surfing’s rise as a global participatory and spectator sport”.
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Sport Climbing will be just one of the popular events at next year’s edition of The World Games in Wroclaw, Poland (20 -30 July 2017).
