OfJoshua Schößler
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The Olympic Games begin in Tokyo on July 23. A total of five sports are new. An overview.
Tokyo – The Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo from July 23rd to August 8th. This year there is a new feature: a total of five sports will be represented at the 2021 Olympics for the first time.
Olympia 2021 in Tokyo: Five sports are new this year
Karate, sport climbing, baseball / softball, skateboarding and surfing will be Olympic disciplines for the first time in 2021. The idea behind it: to make the Olympic Games more attractive again, especially for a younger audience. To achieve this goal, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced another innovation: It is now possible for the host countries to propose to the Olympic Committee new sports that are particularly popular in the respective country.
One of the five new sports is sport climbing. The “Olympic Combined” competition format was created especially for this purpose. This three-way battle includes lead, bouldering and speed climbing. All three competitions are held on one day. 40 athletes (20 men, 20 women) are qualified for the climbing competitions in Tokyo. This includes stars like Adam Ondra, Alexander Megos and Janja Garnbret.
Olympia 2021 in Tokyo: There are three disciplines in sport climbing
Surfing is also new this year. This sport is played on the “Chiba” spot 45 minutes from Tokyo. Here, too, 20 men and 20 women compete against each other over two days in the “Shortboard” category. The President of the Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said: “With the many options that young people have today, we can no longer expect them to come to us automatically.”
Karate is particularly popular in Japan, so it is not surprising that this year the sport is an Olympic discipline for the first time. In 2016, the approval of this sport for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro was announced. The decision as to whether karate will be included in the Olympic program in the long term is still pending.
Olympic Summer Games
Olympia 2021 in Tokyo: schedule, dates and participants: inside
Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021: baseball and softball were already Olympic in 2008
Baseball and softball are also extremely popular in Japan. As with karate, it is not certain whether this sport will become an Olympic discipline in the long term. However, this is a comeback: baseball and softball were Olympic games as early as 2008.
The decision to make skateboarding an Olympic discipline met with mixed reactions from the skater scene. Many fear that in this sport, which is practiced on the street away from institutions, commercialization and stylistic lack of ideas will spread. Others look forward to representing their country in their sport and making skating more popular. Skateboarding is carried out in two disciplines.
Olympic Games 2021 in Tokyo: Not everyone likes skateboarding as an Olympic discipline
Park skating involves riding in a kind of large, dry swimming pool (it was the dry pools in California in the 1970s that inspired the discipline). Street skating, on the other hand, is based on the conditions on the streets. Both are freestyle disciplines. A jury decides on the number of points.
With the newly introduced rule that host countries can now propose new disciplines, it can be expected that numerous other sports will celebrate an Olympic debut in the future. Here you will find an overview of all sports at the Olympics 2021 (Joshua Schößler)
