IOC Approves New Events for Tokyo Olympics

The International Olympic Committee has approved a number of new events for the 2020 Tokyo Games at the IOC’s Executive Board meeting held at Lausanne, Switzerland. The new events were added to reflect the IOC’s focus on gender equality and appeal to young people.

Salient Highlights

The Tokyo Olympics would include 321 events which is an increase from 306 events held at Rio 2016.
The new additions inlcude a mixed 4x400m relay along with 14 other events such as 3-on-3 basketball, the mixed relay, mixed swimming, mixed team archery, BMX freestyle etc. In addition, Mixed triathlon will also be included in the Tokyo games for the first time.
Further, a mixed team event for judo will be included. Each team of judo will have 3 men and 3 women, all representing different weight classes. At the judo world championships, team events on mixed-gender basis have not taken place. Mixed Doubles Table Tennis competition will also be included. The mixed event was recently featured in the world championships held in Germany.
The 10 minute 3-on-3 basketball event which will be played on a half-sized court is known for its speed. The game was adopted by the International Basketball Federation as an official discipline with common rules in 2007.
Totally, the number of mixed events at Tokyo Olympics will double to 18 up from 9 held in Rio Olympics.
The IOC’s focus in selecting the new events was for their appeal to young and urban audiences as well as for redressing long-standing imbalances between male and female athletes.
IOC also reduced the number of athletes who will be competing in Tokyo olympics by 285 compared to Rio in order to prevent the games from being increasingly bloated and costly.

IOC

The IOC is the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement headquartered at Lausanne, Switzerland. It is a not-for-profit independent international organisation comprised of volunteers. It was founded on 23rd June, 1894. The IOC Session and Executive Board are responsible for making important decisions for the organisation.

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2017