This ain’t your daddy’s Olympics! Well, actually the one coming up is. It is in fact your dad’s Olympics. But the next Summer Olympics in 2020 is going to boast a whole new slew of events, some of them you could even call…. radical.
Yep, the Olympics is all growns up and it’s decided to add a couple of new events only about 30 years after they were actually relevant; karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding.
5 new sports confirmed for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games https://t.co/0eSFtqZILV via @BBCSport Was hoping for #CrossFit but these work. #Olympics
— Darren Kavinoky (@DarrenKavinoky) August 3, 2016
So break out that old Trapper Keeper you’ve been storing since middle school, grow out your mullet and throw on the rope chain. This dream is happening.
The International Olympic Committee is also bringing back softball and baseball, especially since they should have never kicked those sports out to begin with. According to the IOC, this actually only counts as five sports as they’ve combined baseball and softball. But I live in America, by God, where softball is played by athletic women and sometimes by drunken, fat men and it shares only a passing resemblance to baseball.
Is it a coincidence that these sports are coming back as part of the Tokyo Olympic Games? Probably not. Baseball is crazy popular in japan and karate? Come on.
“We want to take sport to the youth,” IOC president Thomas Bach said. “With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them. Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfills all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it. Taken together, the five sports are in innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo games.”
The “youth” he says. He might have had a point in, say, 1968 with surfing or 1987 with skateboarding. Tony Hawk is 48 years old for God’s sake. His video game is older than my daughter who is about to start high school.
If you’re anything like me, and I figure you are since you’ve read this far, you have no idea what the hell “sport climbing” is. Well, I didn’t either so I had to look it up. What I found is more ridiculous than you even imagined.
Basically they’ve turned a McDonald’s Playland into a sport. It’s your kid’s 8th birthday party, only with more clowns.
At least we get baseball and softball back, which is good. The last softball gold medal was actually won by Japan, with the United States getting silver. It was the only time in the four games where softball was played the USA didn’t win gold.
Baseball was much more competitive on the international stage. From 1984-2008 Cuba won five medals, with three golds and two silvers. The United States won one gold and two bronze, South Korea won a gold and a bronze, Japan won a silver and two bronze and Australia and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) each won a silver apiece.
The additions were proposed by the Tokyo Games organizing committee as part of a new process where the host country can suggest new events when they host. So the next time the Olympics comes back to the United States, get ready to add Hot Dog Eating, Beer Pong and Lawnmower jumping.
Did you know? Tug of War was an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1920. Great Britain dominated the sport, winning two golds, two silvers and a bronze. The United States was the second best over that 20-year span, winning a full set of medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze.
Did you know? Dueling was also an Olympic sport in 1900, 1904 and 1912 and, shockingly, not a single person died. Instead each man (and it was just men) would basically shoot a human shaped target in a timed event. The last gold medalist was American Alfred Lane, who hit the target 30 times for a score of 287. Lane is the first Olympic shooter to win two gold medals and eventually won five and a bronze. He was basically the Michael Phelps of the 1912 games winning gold in the 25-meter rapid fire pistol (dueling pistol), the 50-meter pistol and the Team 50-meter military pistol. Lane was inducted into the International Shooters Hall of Fame in 1991.
