IOC approves five new sports for Olympic Games

The International Olympics Committee has agreed to add baseball/softball, karate, skateboard, sports climbing and surfing to the sports programme for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
A statement on the committee’s website disclosed that the decision was made by the 129th IOC Session, held on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro.
It said the decision was the most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic programme in modern history.
The Organising Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Games proposed the five new sports in response to the new flexibility provided by Olympic Agenda 2020.
According to the statement, the decision was the culmination of a two-year process that began with the unanimous approval of the IOCs strategic roadmap in 2014.
The statement said: “The recommendation to give Organising 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 of the Olympic programme.
“Tokyo 2020, the first Organising Committee able to take advantage of the change, submitted its proposal for the five new sports to the IOC in September 2015.”
It however quoted IOC President, Thomas Bach, as saying: “We want to take sports to the youths. 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.
“The IOC considered a variety of factors when assessing the proposal, including the impact on gender equality, the youth appeal of the sports and the legacy value of adding them to the Tokyo Games.”
The additional sports in Tokyo will not affect the athlete or event quotas of existing Olympic sports or be binding on future host cities.
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.
This sport 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 programme in the existing 28 Olympic sports for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 are ongoing, and will be finalised by the IOC Executive Board in mid-2017.