The Highest Stakes for Low-Visibility Sports
It’s been a nervous few days for the leaders of the international federations of breakdancing, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, softball, squash, surfing, weightlifting, modern pentathlon and flag football.
B-girl Sunny Choi hopes to be selected for the 2024 US Olympic breakdancing team in Paris; the sport’s international federation is fighting to have the sport in the 2028 Olympics
On Friday, the International Olympic Committee was supposed to make a decision with huge consequences for those sports’ future: would they be included in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles? Instead, the IOC, without explanation, said it would wait till its October 15 meeting in Mumbai to announce its final lineup.
Other sports are waiting on that vote too, but cricket, motor racing, and baseball should be fine without the steroid injection of visibility the Olympics gives them.
If your idea of the Olympics is that it is the same old sports every year, and if you are shocked by some of the sports being considered for 2028, you haven’t been keeping up. Since the revival of the modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, there has been a fascinating evolution of the sports played in them.
Consider these sports on the schedule of the 1900 Olympics:
· Tug-of-war (England dominated)
· Live pigeon shooting (the winner killed 21)
· Ballooning (airplanes hadn’t quite been invented)
· Motor racing (cars were brand new)
· 200 meter swimming obstacle course (climb poles, clamber over boats, swim under stuff)
· (Poodle clipping was not included in 1900, and Avril Lafoule did not win by clipping 17 poodles in 2 hours, but it made for a great April Fool’s joke before the 2008 Games)
Strangely, other than tug-of-war (which lasted till 1920), most of these did not make it in to future Olympics. But ever since, there has been a truly wonderful set of “sports” in the Games. I won’t include all that went in and out of favor – but the range is impressive.
Rope-climbing made it into four Olympics; the ropes could be useful if tug-of-war makes it back in 2032.
Club swinging (1904, sort of an early form of rhythmic gymnastics); plunge for distance (1904 – you jump into a pool and try to remain underwater for 60 seconds; favors heavy competitors); greased pole climbing (1904); pistol dueling (1908, with wax bullets, from 20 meters); skijoring (1928; you ride behind a horse in a sled), rope climbing (in four Olympics, ending in 1932), sled dog racing (1932 – demo only; it didn’t last), airplane gliding (1936; canceled in 1940 after a pilot crashed before the competition), and ski ballet (1988, a demo only).
So how do you get your sport in? The IOC spells out an elaborate set of 35 criteria that make it really hard (Option 1) or relatively simple (Option 2) to appear in the Games. Basically there are two paths:
1) The sport needs to have followers around the world (there needs to be some sort of international federation, with national organizations in 75 countries on four continents for men’s sports; at least 40 countries on three continents for women). It needs to have been around for a while; not be too expensive to cover on TV; and have potential to meaningfully increase viewership of the Olympics worldwide, particularly among millennials, while “maintaining the modern traditions” of the Olympics; or
2) The host country (which is spending gazillions to host) has to promise a lot of people will turn out to watch whatever the new sport is (Tokyo really wanted karate in 2020; Paris really wanted breakdancing in 2024. So they got them). But that only gets you into a single Olympics.
Both pathways have one thing in common: if a new sport is going to be included, it needs to make the Olympics more money.
The sports want to be included for the same reason, and more recently, the competition to be added to the rotation has become more intense. Activities like lacrosse or flag football or breakdancing, for example, have small numbers of avid fans, but the Olympics brings billions of eyeballs. For the people who are the best in the world at softball or squash or karate, having an Olympics to train for could be the capstone of a career.
And behind all those sports waiting for the news about 2028, there is a line of other sports lobbying hard, and for the same reasons: visibility and validation. Here are just a few: tug-of-war (they have history on their side!); bowling (could use a global boost); sumo (definitely has a weighty legacy); korfball (sort of co-ed basketball with a soccer ball, no nets or dunking; was a demonstration sport in 1920 and 1928); chess (might struggle with the “exciting to show on TV” test). Pickleball and padel (sort of a cross between tennis and squash) also have high hopes for an Olympic future beginning in 2032 (pickleball needs to straighten out a tricky problem – they currently have two international federations locked in a death match for supremacy).
Korfball is co-ed, and intent on Olympic recognition as a sport in 2032…
For all of the international federations behind these efforts, winning the chance to play on the Olympic stage is the equivalent of getting the Wonka bar with the golden ticket – a chance to show off your sport on the world’s largest stage.
But for now the twelve sports on the line for 2028 are stuck waiting another painful month. The IFAF (International Federation of Flag Football) says it will respect the process, claiming simply that it is “excited about the prospect of being included in Los Angeles 2028.”
And as soon as that decision comes down, watch out, world, for korfball. They’re gunning for 2032!
-Leslie
Update: 10/16/23: Cricket is in at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics (for the first time since 1900), along with baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash. Breaking is out. It’s also a no for korfball, sumo, tug-of-war, pickleball and padel. Weightlighting, which was on double-secret probation because of doping issues, will remain in for LA, as well as modern pentathlon, which agreed to substitute obstacle course racing for horse jumping as the fifth event. https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
References:
The decision to delay announcement of new sports: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1140560/la-programme
The poodle-clipping hoax: http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/olympic_poodle_clipping
A nice review of interesting Olympic sports over the years (though they did fall for the poodle-clipping joke):
https://www.thecoolist.com/strange-olympics-sports/
Olympic event inclusion criteria: https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/Who-We-Are/Commissions/Olympic-Programme/Olympic-programme-Host-city-proposal-Evaluation-criteria.pdf?_ga=2.183395748.304873666.1627395939-amp-UglpLEJdCMnJ_sH5bkzn1g