Considering the Tokyo Olympics, held in the middle of this year, as its most engaged competition of all time, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) had no doubts in keeping skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing in the pre-list of 28 sports for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028.
Introduced at the event in Japan, the three modalities will also be in Paris-2024. In contrast, the IOC Executive Board initially excluded boxing, weightlifting and modern pentathlon from the Olympics. These sports can still return to the Olympic program, but will have to adjust their activities with the new IOC policies.
The sports program is being brought forward to provide certainty for athletes, national committees and the 2028 organizing committee. This way, everyone involved with the Games will be able to program and prepare preparation plans more confidently.
The proposal to include those three sports aimed at young people, according to the IOC, is based on the significant contribution that the modalities have made to the overall success of the Games, their commitment to innovation and the partnership expressed by the Organizing Committee of Los Angeles-2028.
The Tokyo-Paris cycle will be just three years old because the new coronavirus pandemic delayed the Games in Japan for a year. The uncertainties prior to the postponement and the impediments caused by Covid-19 made the Rio-Tokyo period too disruptive.
Hence the need to provide advance certainties to regulate the Olympic cycles. The IOC Executive Board considered all the recommendations made by the Olympic Program Commission.
The finalization of the sports review will take place before the IOC session in 2023. The events and the quota of athletes for each sport will be decided in December 2024, after the Paris Games, informs the entity.
In these times of Olympic change, the three excluded –boxing, weight and pentathlon– will have a lot of work to do. For Paris-2024, the program is maintained with these sports, although they should already show some progress in correcting mistakes.
Boxing, a traditional Olympic sport, was under the control of Aiba (International Boxing Association), which organized the sport’s tournaments at the Games. Less drastic from 2015 onwards and more forceful after Rio-2016, relations between the association and the IOC deteriorated.
Aiba lost its status as a sport tutor at the Olympics, and the tournaments in Tokyo were played under the control of a task force organized by the IOC. Governance, financial transparency, sustainability and integrity of arbitration and judgment processes are the obstacles under discussion.
Aiba must demonstrate that it has successfully addressed the corrections to the serious problems observed in those sectors of its administration, where even strong signs of manipulation of results in the Rio Olympics were raised.
Weightlifting, on the other hand, has become an emblematic case, as it requires an effective change in culture and a transition to comply with Olympic concepts.
The IWF (International Weightlifting Federation) is responsible for organizing the sport worldwide. The entity must carefully assess the historical incidence of doping in the modality and guarantee the integrity, robustness and total independence of its anti-doping program. A delicate and serious matter.
In the modern pentathlon, the great concern is focused on lowering the costs required by the sport, as well as its complexity, improving the areas of safety, accessibility, universality and appeal to young people and the general public.
As is well known, the pentathlon brings together competitions in equestrianism, sport shooting, running, swimming and fencing. The specialty came into the crosshairs of opponents, after flagrant abuse of animals at the Tokyo Olympics.
The incidents boosted the campaign aimed at making the sport cheaper. The competition with horses, which makes the practice of the specialty with the transport and care of the animals, is exchanged for another modality, allowing greater access to the sport. It sounds strange that this debate does not include equestrianism, training, CCE and jumping.
The UIPM (International Union of Modern Pentathlon) took over the measure, even though it was the modality idealized by the creator of the Modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, with the proposal of finding a complete athlete competing in the five sports.
In addition to those excluded, but which can still reverse the measure, the IOC has another, more relevant concern, football, which is kept on the sports grid for Los Angeles. With wide practice and worldwide repercussion, FIFA (International Football Federation) is studying the possibilities of the World Cup being played every two years.
The measure, if adopted, will bring enormous damage to world sport, as there will be a year with the coincidence of the World Cup and the Olympics. The two main international sporting events in the same season will, of course, make a satisfactory sporting calendar practically impossible.
The IOC, for the time being, draws attention to the risk of evasion of superstars in Olympic football tournaments, but the damage could also occur in commercial and sponsorship agreements, which will become more complicated with a division. And it is not the sport that will gain from this measure.
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