IOC designs eSports at the Olympics and director talks about rejuvenating the Games

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The renewal of the Olympic program is an irreversible process and, for each sport that enters, another will have to leave. This may not be good news for traditional sports that don’t have great appeal with the new generations, the IOC’s (International Olympic Committee) target audience.

Although there is no set date, so-called eSports should soon be at the Olympics, according to James Macleod, director of Relations with the National Olympic Committees and Olympic Solidarity. It’s a matter of time.

“One thing the IOC recognizes is that the gaming industry is constantly evolving. We look at these games that are linked to sports and where there is physical activity. Last year, we launched the Virtual Olympic Series. Sailing, cycling… All supported by international federations”, he explains to sheet.

Macleod refers to modalities in which there is physical effort, but they are virtual reality. Where you have to run and simulate the movements of real sport.

“This will really happen. It will come in. It’s inevitable”, agrees the president of the COB (Olympic Committee of Brazil), Paulo Wanderley.

Brazilians rule out that video games, the so-called e-games, will be Olympic one day. Make sure that won’t happen, and if the idea comes up, you’ll fight it.

Macleod is not committed to the matter, but makes it clear that it is not something to be ruled out. It is under review by the IOC, which has studies of its popularity.

“We can look at the numbers and the demographics. We want to encourage people to play eSports instead of games like League of Legends. But we’re also mindful of that,” he adds.

Paris-2024 will have the debut of breakdancing, a modality that was successful at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. Climbing, surfing and skateboarding, which debuted at Tokyo-2020, remain on the show. Karate and baseball were excluded. For Los Angeles-2028, so far, boxing, weightlifting and modern pentathlon are out.

“We have a limited number of athletes who go to the Games. If one sport enters, another must leave. What we want is to see the Olympic program remain relevant and focused on youth. There was the case of surfing, which attracts a huge audience. A Brazilian [Ítalo Ferreira] won a gold medal. That means the Olympics remain relevant,” Macleod said.

The focus on rejuvenating the Olympic program is one of the recommendations of the Olympic Agenda 2020+5, published last year. Macleod was invited by the COB to present it at the entity’s congress, held this month in Salvador. His participation had to be canceled at the last minute because he contracted Covid-19.

According to him, the effort is to make the list of modalities remain interesting and relevant to attract young people. It is not a new process, but it should be accentuated.

There is discontent from those who leave. Karate, for example, had its only chance in Tokyo and there is no prospect of returning.

“I tried to influence this process and I couldn’t”, confesses Wanderley, who claims to have sought a solution to help maintain the fighting modality in the Olympics.

The exclusion from boxing came months after the best Olympic result in Brazilian history at the Games. Hebert Conceição won the gold medal, Beatriz Ferreira took the silver and Abner Teixeira, the bronze. The hope of the modality is that the IBA (International Boxing Association, in English), which lives with allegations of corruption, hand over the organization of the tournament at the Olympics to the IOC, as happened in Tokyo.

The International Olympic Committee’s project is to make classification a relevant fact that should be celebrated. A kind of version of “the important thing is to compete”, a phrase attributed to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, former president of the entity.

The project is to have similar events of different modalities that offer places in the Olympics and create a slogan for that, something like “the way to the Games.”

“It’s something we’re going to try. We want to maximize the exposure of athletes and sponsors, reinforcing the importance of qualifying. We can add value to sports with that. I think in the next six months we’ll have news. It’s possible to focus qualifiers on continental competitions.”

The same goes for the refugee team at the event which, with the War in Ukraine, brought more attention to the problem.

“The sad reality is that there are more and more refugees in the world. There are two million Ukrainians at the moment. In Tokyo, the refugee team represented eight million people. That’s more than Germany. problem and promote the integration of these athletes with their new countries”, he concludes.

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