The next year’s Tokyo Olympics is set to witness the addition of five new sports that have never been played in the history of Olympics. International Olympic Committee has unanimously approved the inclusion of five new sports at the Tokyo 2020 Games in which a total of 18 additional events will be organised.
This all started when the IOC assessed the 26 sports contested at the 2012 Olympics post-2012 Summer Games. Keeping with the ritual, that new set of sports would be added in new editions of Olympics. In 2015 IOC finally came up with a new policy that the games that would be included would be an “event-based” program rather than sport-based.
The IOC also gave the authority to the Tokyo 2020 Organizing committee to come up with new game proposals as recommendations to the 2020 Summer Games. The committee took advantage of the change submitted its proposal for the five new sports to the IOC in September 2015. They drafted five new sports that can be included in the 2020 Summer Olympics which was approved by the IOC and the member nations.
The five new games approved by the IOC are Karate, Sport Climbing, Surfing, baseball/Softball, and Skateboarding. 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.
After the official announcement on the inclusion of the new sports, Tokyo 2020 President Yoshiro Mori said,
“The inclusion of the package of new sports will afford young athletes the chance of a lifetime to realize their dreams of competing in the Olympic Games – the world’s greatest sporting stage – and inspire them to achieve their best, both in sport and in life.”
The IOC accepted a variety of factors such as gender equality, the youth appeal of the sports and the legacy of the sports adding to the Tokyo Olympics’ in the coming years. The committee also made sure that the additional sports in Tokyo will not impact the athlete or event quotas of existing Olympic sports or be binding on future host cities.
Moreover, the IOC has also decided to add more interesting and exciting, event-based disciplines such as including 3×3 basketball, freestyle BMX and Madison cycling, as well as further mixed events.
In fact, out of those five new games, baseball/softball will be marking their returns in the next year’s Olympics after 12 years after their exclusion from the summer program post-2008.
With just over 9 months left for the big event, here is the list of those five new sports that have found a place in the Tokyo Olympics next year:
| SPORTS | EVENTS | TOTAL EVENTS | TOTAL ATHLETES |
| Baseball/ Softball | Baseball- Men | 1 | 144 |
| Softball- Women | 1 | 90 | |
| Surfing | Shortboard (Men & Women) | 2 | 40 |
| Skateboarding | Street ( Men & Women) | 2 | 40 |
| Park ( Men & Women) | 2 | 40 | |
| Karate | Kata ( Men & Women) | 2 | 20 |
| Kumite (3 Weight classes) | 6 | 60 | |
| Sport Climbing | Bouldering, Lead and Speed Combined (Men & Women) | 2 | 40 |
| TOTAL | 18 | 474 | |
1. Baseball/ Softball:
Both baseball and Softball will be making a return in the next year’s Summer Olympics. Owing to their popularity in Japan, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing committee had proposed these two sports which were later approved by the IOC and the member nations. The game baseball is derived from another bat and ball sport called Rounders, which was quite popular in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th century. Baseball would be played by the Men’s team while softball would be played between the women’s team participating in the Olympics. Both men and women will be playing baseball/softball at the Olympics 2020.
A game of baseball is played between two teams, each composed of nine players, that take turns playing offense and defense. The team playing offense bats and the team playing defense pitches and fields.
The game of softball has a relatively bigger ball with the parameters of the field a bit smaller compared to the baseball field, and the pitchers throw the ball underhand instead of overhand. There will be one event each in both Baseball and softball in the Tokyo Olympics with 16 teams in the baseball and 10 teams in softball event.
2. Surfing
The aquatic sport has been added to the list of the new sports that would be played at the Tokyo Olympics. Surfing has been added to create involve both men and women to participate in the water sport. Surfing would be making its debut in the Summer Games next year as Men and Women will hit the Shidashita Beach on Japan’s Pacific coast. Four athletes would compete at a time with each heat lasting to 20 to 25 minutes, depending on the quality of the waves. Instead of getting judged on the basis of the number of waves athletes catch and surpass, athletes will be judged on how they handle the difficulty during the waves with their skills and based on that they get their respective scores. A total of two events will take place i.e., Men’s and women’s. 40 athletes will participate in the event with 20 each in both men and women events.
3. Skateboarding
With Snow-boarding already a part of the Winter Olympics, the idea of introducing its Summer form of games was soon initiated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Skateboarding makes its Olympics debut in 2020 with park and street competitions for men and women. The Park course consists of ramps and rails for riders to add the knife-edge competition in the events. The park skateboarding result is judged based on the speed and height of the jumps as well as the grabs made while playing the game. Competitors get three timed runs to post their best score during their outing. Whereas, Street involves skating in urban environments filled with obstacles such as benches, boxes, and stair sets. The result is determined on the basis of the difficulty of the maneuvers faced by the athletes. A total of 80 athletes will be participating in both park and street boarding events with 40 men and women each.
4. Karate
Tokyo 2020 Olympics will see the feature of a martial arts sport in its edition in 2020. Earlier, the Olympics had Judo and Tai Kwon Do as in its editions but the new addition would bring in more and more spectators from across the globe. The host nation, Japan is considered one of the favorites to win the gold medal in Karate as the sport is very famous in the country.
Two major disciplines will feature in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games namely- Kata and Kumite. Kata is the form of discipline and will have one event each for men and women. A total of 20 athletes will be a part of the Kata discipline with 10 women and men each in a total of 2 events to be held.
Kumite which is considered the sparring discipline in which the fighters make the motion of boxing, without landing the heavy blows on the opponents. The IOC has classified 3 weight categories in the Kumite discipline as opposed to the five categories used by the World Karate Federation. A total of 60 athletes will participate in the Kumite discipline in over 6 events with 30 men and women athletes each.
5. Sport Climbing
Sport Climbing has been included as one of the disciplines in the rock climbing game. The discipline focuses on climbing the artificial walls. The event will have notably three categories- Bouldering, Lead and Speed Combined.
Bouldering involves climbing without safety ropes, individually trying to ascend as many fixed routes on a four-meter high wall as they can within four minutes. In Lead Climbing, the athletes can try to climb as high as they can on a 15-meter artificial wall within 15 minutes, but they will have the support of the safety ropes. If two people reach the same height, the person who did it fastest wins.
Speed Climbing constitutes the race of the two athletes taking the support of the rope and race against each other on a fixed route to the top of a 15-meter high wall.
This sport will have a total of 40 athletes with 20 men and 20 women each. The sport will have two different events with one for men and one event for women respectively.
It will be very interesting to see how much impactful and attention-grabbing the additional sports will have in the upcoming Summer Games scheduled to be held in the next year.
