Surfing added to 2020 Olympics in Tokyo

TOKYO (AP) – Former major leaguer Warren Cromartie has welcomed the return of baseball to the Olympics but says he doesn’t see players from Major League Baseball taking part in the 2020 Tokyo Games.

The announcement by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) also said that sport climbing would be introduced into the games, and that 2020 will see the return of baseball and softball to the Olympics.

Baseball and softball were played in the Olympics until 2012.

The new sports, proposed in June, were confirmed by a unanimous vote at the 129th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday.

Its Olympics Winter Games program began to be updated in the 1990s, with freestyle skiing and snowboarding events joining its list of sports. We will now plan how to upgrade our program to help our athletes qualify for the Olympics. “This is really exciting for us, and something we’ve been waiting for since the day they took the sport out of the Olympics”.

“Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfils all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it”, said IOC President Thomas Bach.

The new sports will add 18 events and 474 athletes. Baseball and softball are global sports that belong in the Olympics.

And just eight years after it banished baseball and softball from the Olympic games, the committee announced today that beginning in 2020, softball and baseball would once again become Olympic sports. The IOC voted both out in 2005.

Surfing will add something new to the Olympics program because of the cool and playful lifestyle it brings along with it, according to Fernando Aguerre, the president of the International Surfing Association.

The rest, however, will be Olympic events for the first time in what should be an interesting tournament in Tokyo in four years’ time.

Climbing will reportedly feature two categories for both men and women: bouldering and a combined lead and speed.

Karate is to take place at the Budokan arena, which coordination committee president John Coates named “the spiritual home of martial arts in Japan”. The sports will be: skateboarding, surfing, baseball/softball, karate, and sports climbing.

Sport Climbing will be just one of the popular events at next year’s edition of The World Games in Wroclaw, Poland (20 -30 July 2017).