Surfing, skateboarding, climbing, and karate will become Olympics sports for the first time ever at Tokyo 2020 after a long-anticipated decision was confirmed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Aug. 3. Baseball/softball has also been let back into the games for the first time since 2008.
Since the Olympic governing body said that five new sports would be approved as a “package” rather than individually, the decision became a matter of formality. But how did these sports end up on top? Why were they the chosen ones, and not squash, roller sports, or wushu, a Chinese martial art?
The first reason is simple: they are relevant to Japan. Baseball is Japan’s biggest sport by a mile, karate is a traditional favorite, and skateboarding is popular among young people. What the IOC did—and is probably going to do from now on—is empower the Olympic host cities to create their own sport programs.
This is a reasonable approach. Japanese spectators and TV viewers will be much more interested in baseball than, say, the modern pentathlon—even though it is not being dropped from the program in 2020. It’s possible that there will be more local favorites as the Olympics continue to rotate among the continents in the future. The next U.S. Olympics might see American football; and if India ever becomes a host country then cricket will surely get a look in.
Under the IOC’s Agenda 2020, no sports will be removed from the program to accommodate new ones—which would have happened in the past. But the number of disciplines and athletes taking part is limited, so it’s likely that some sports will be reduced in numbers.
Get Ready for Action
But there is a second rationale behind the five-sport package announced for Tokyo. Never before have so many so-called “action” sports entered the Olympics simultaneously. Skateboarding, climbing, and surfing follow in the footsteps of fellow extreme sports BMX and snowboarding, which have been unanimously praised as breaths of fresh air to the summer and winter Olympics.
Many climbers, surfers, and skateboarders are scared that they might lose control to organizations and people that don’t understand their sports. The IOC idea’s of combining all three disciplines of climbing in one, so that athletes will have to do bouldering, speed, and lead, is something that many climbers I spoke to during my research are not happy about and see as a sign of lack of respect and understanding of their sport. In skateboarding, surfing, and climbing, there have been numerous online petitions claiming that the Olympic movement only wants to exploit their sports.
So while it looks like Tokyo 2020 will be the first truly experimental Olympics, every sport will have to prove its worth with no sport guaranteed a place at the next games in 2024. The danger is that the whole Olympics could become a little disintegrated, with sports making fleeting appearances for a few games, and decisions about whether they stay or go, or new sports appear, made based on the particular marketing needs of countries, sponsors, and broadcasters. So enjoy the next few weeks in Rio 2016—it’s likely to be the last “traditional” Olympic games.
Mikhail Batuev is a lecturer in sport management at the Department of Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation at Northumbria University, Newcastle, U.K. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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