Five sports, including baseball, skateboarding and surfing, will feature at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after the IOC voted them in on Wednesday (August 3) in an attempt to revamp the Games programme to attract a younger audience.
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.
The IOC session in the Brazilian city voted unanimously with a show of hands in favour of the sports which will make a one-off appearance in the Games.
Baseball and softball, proposed to be staged in Yokohama, will each have a competition involving six teams. They last featured at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 before being taken off the programme and missing the 2012 and the 2016 Games.
It is unclear, however, if baseball will feature the world’s best players from the MLB in the United States.
“For the sport for sure, it can help to grow worldwide and to globalise our sport more, baseball and softball, and it is a very unique situation, because it is the first time that one sport is presented into a discipline, so we can guarantee the quality agenda, according to the agenda 2020. So, really, I think we are enthusiastic, we are honoured to be selected, to grow to be on the big stage of the Olympics,” World Baseball and Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari said.
As part of sweeping reforms initiated in 2014, hosts can bring in sports popular in their countries to boost ratings and attract greater sponsorship as well as a younger generation of fans.
Surfing, with 20 men and 20 women athletes, will take place in the sea, instead of on artificial waves, likely in the Prefecture of Chiba. Skateboarding, with two street and two park events involving 40 competitors each (20 male, 20 female), will be in Tokyo.
“It is a very special feeling, it is like literally it has been a 22 year paddle on this wave, on this Olympic wave. It is a long paddle and I am glad that we were able to ride it and succeed,” said international federation president Fernando Aguerre.
“We think our appeal is not just to Tokyo, we think that surfing appeals globally and in that sense, our focus will be in making our appearance in the Olympic Games very memorable. Like that phrase you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression – we are going to give our best impression. We are going to do it the right way.”
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.
“We feel very happy and extremely satisfied that we have been working for so long to achieve this goal and finally it has come. We have been fighting for many, many years to become an Olympic sport and it hasn’t been easy, but in the end we have achieved it. We feel extremely happy (just) as we are sure that all the karate community in the whole world is feeling,” said World Karate Federation President, Antonio Espinos.
Sports climbing, also in urban Tokyo, will feature men’s and women’s competitions for bouldering, lead and speed combined with a total of 474 athletes to compete in the five sports.
Venues are to be finalised by the end of the year, Mori said.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016
