The International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved five new sports for Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. The decision by the 129th IOC session in Rio de Janeiro was the most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic program in modern history.
The IOC agreed to add softball/baseball, karate, sports climbing, karate and surfing to the sports program for 2020 Olympic Games which is to be held in Tokyo. This is a historic step in bringing the Games to young people and reflecting the trend of urbanization of sport.
The Organizing Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Games proposed the five new sports in response to the new flexibility provided by Olympic Agenda 2020.
The recommendation to give Organizing Committees the flexibility to propose new sports for their edition of the Games was intended to put even more focus on innovation, flexibility and youth in the development Olympic program.
Tokyo 2020 is the first organizing committee able to take advantage of the change, submitted its proposal for the five new sports to the IOC in September 2015.
“We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them. Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfils all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it. Taken together, the five sports are an innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo Games,” IOC President Thomas Bach said.
The Tokyo Games will be one of the most inclusive in world history, said Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo 2020 Committee.
The five-sport package will add 18 new events and 474 athletes to the 2020 Olympic program. The vote came just two days before the Opening Ceremonies for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.
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, because softball teams have 15 players whilst baseball teams have 24. Tokyo 2020 will rely heavily on existing and temporary venues to stage the competitions.
Discussions on the event program in the existing 28 Olympic sports for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 are ongoing, and will be finalized by the IOC Executive Board in mid-2017.
-Agencies
