Olympics: IOC confirms five additional sports for Tokyo 2020

In addition to the return of the diamond to Olympic fields of play for the first time since 2008, karate and the youth-focused sports of surfing, skateboarding and sports climbing will make their Olympic debut in four years.

The sports were presented as a package of five, and are only guaranteed to be contested at the Games in 2020, and not at any subsequent editions.
"I think this is really a milestone in the innovation of the Olympic program, which we then can experience in four years from now in Tokyo 2020," said IOC President Thomas Bach.

The IOC looked to secure the future of the Games by including sports that would appeal to a younger generation.

"This will constitute a new chapter in the illustrious history of the Olympic Games," Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, told the IOC assembly.

"The inclusion of the package will afford young athletes the chance of a lifetime to compete in the Olympic Games," he said.

Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee CEO Toshiro Muto said, "I firmly believe these sports will deliver significant benefits, worldwide youth appeal, increased excitement in Japan and overall value to the Games."

In arguing for IOC members to accept baseball, which was slated to be played at Yokohama Stadium, home of the DeNA BayStars, Muto said, "it could almost be called our national sport, and softball is also extremely popular."

"We are very proud to be elected again, but this time we have a very new face because we are only one federation and two disciplines, unlike in the past," said Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation.

Very much like how snowboarding has become one of the most popular sports at the winter Games, the IOC will be hoping that the inclusion of skateboarding and surfing, particularly, will draw people, and importantly marketing dollars, to the behemoth multi-sport event.

Sabatino Aracu, president of the International Federation of Roller Sports said, "Skateboarding, born in the street, is a very important urban sports and we want to demonstrate what we are. We are sure we will give to Tokyo 2020 an extraordinary spectacle."

In June, when the IOC confirmed the five sports that would be put to the IOC Commission ahead of the Rio Games, officials also pointed to gender equality as one of the upsides of the new events.

Apart from baseball and softball which have six teams of 24 and 15 players per squad respectively, all the other sports will involve equal numbers of male and female competitors.

Skateboard competition will involve street and park events. The former using urban environment-style obstacles and features for the riders to use for grinds, board-slides and jumps while the latter gives the riders ramps and pipe-type structures allowing for the performance of "vert" tricks for points.

Bouldering -- climbing without the use of ropes or harnesses -- will be one of the two events in sports climbing. The other, lead and speed combined, involves participants plotting a course up an artificial wall with technical proficiency or swiftness being the aim of the game.

"Together with the IOC, the five sports can make something that is a real change, a real improvement. We will be connecting to the future," said Marco Scolaris, president of the International Federation of Sports Climbing.

John Coates, who heads the IOC's Coordination Commission, said that skateboarding and bouldering are proposed to be held at Odaiba, using an "urban cluster concept" for the venue.

Surfing, like skateboarding, is a judged sport. Waveriders will be awarded points for technique and style, and wave selection as Coates was clear in saying that the event should be held on natural swells -- in Tokyo 2020's case, at Chiba Prefecture's Shidashita Point.

Fernando Aguerre, the president of the International Surfing Association, said, "22 years paddling the Olympic wave, and we finally made it to shore."
"It took us a while to get here -- we were busy surfing -- but we are glad to get here."

Slated to be held at Nippon Budokan, which Coates described as the "spiritual home of martial arts in Japan," men's and women's kata and kumite karate events will bring the Okinawa-born martial art to the Olympics for the first time, and will no doubt spur a blossoming of interest in the native Japanese sport.

Antonio Espinos, president of the World Karate Federation said, "For us, this is a thrilling day."

"Who could have thought that in 1970 when the World Karate Federation was founded, when we had our first world championships in the Nippon Budokan, that we would come again to have the Olympic Games. The reality goes much more than our imagination."

Source: Kyodo