Breaking Added to Paris 2024 Sports Programme

allezfred said:
amp.theguardian.com

'More urban': competitive breakdancing added to Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Breakdancing will be part of the Paris Olympics in 2024 as the IOC seeks to make the Games ‘more gender balanced and youthful’
amp.theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com

50km race walk is gone as well as categories in boxing and weightlifting.
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I'm sure that's disappointing for the athletes involved in those events that are being cut, but did we really need to rack walk distances at the Olympics? Probably not.
 
If everyone thought judging in figure skating was open to manipulation... I reckon that break dancing will be worthy to bring a challenge in the dodgy judging department.

Personally I think they need to add netball to the Olympics as it is a hugely popular sport. But the team sizes are probably a barrier.
 
starrynight said:
Personally I think they need to add netball to the Olympics as it is a hugely popular sport. But the team sizes are probably a barrier.
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Netball is a poor Commonwealth relation of basketball to most of the rest of the world innit. :shuffle:
 
starrynight said:
Baseball is being played at the upcoming summer games and it’s a sport mostly only played by Americans.
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Baseball was an Olympic sport from 1992 to 2008, and Cuba won 3/5 times

As Vagabond noted, baseball is played in many countries. It was added to the Tokyo games because the game is so popular in Japan, and lots of MLB players come from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other countries that are most certainly not the US.
 
Okay I've had some time to reflect and I've done some research.

I watched some footage of the 2018 Youth Olympics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKFtuOJo68U

This looks very similar in many ways to the mens floor apparatus in artistic gymnastics - except set more to music.

It will be quite interesting to see what happens with it as a sport, particularly if some countries with deep gymnastics fields see an opening.

I expect that any kind of urban 'street' authenticity it holds as an art form might be in a bit of trouble.

Particularly as I can see over time it becoming something that could become an offshoot of the gymnastics programs.
 
I also did a bit of online research into what break dancing fans have been saying.

Seen a lot of comments where people were saying, 'how are they going to judge the expression and art versus the moves?' 'Are some people just going to do 20 'x' moves and then win over someone with great footwork and expression?' 'Are they just going to water down the originality so everyone does the same moves for points?'

lol Welcome to figure skating guys.

Just looking at it, break dancing already looks like something that is open to a huge technical leap forward with the kind of athleticism and discipline that the Eteri Tutberidze of breaking could bring. That will definitely ruin all its street cred.
 
IMO changing the sports that are included isn't going to solve the Olympics' problems. They should be more worried about corruption, abuse of athletes, and the unsustainable costs and environmental impacts of staging the event.
 
Back in 2017 there was an Olympic Days promotional event in Paris as part of the 2024 bid. They set up sports stuff all over the city, including a running track in the middle of the Seine. It was so much fun :)

So much of the Olympics is essentially inaccessible to the public given the scope and cost of the event. Finding a way to bring the games closer to regular people, like Paris did in 2017, would be a really good thing.
 
overedge said:
IMO changing the sports that are included isn't going to solve the Olympics' problems. They should be more worried about corruption, abuse of athletes, and the unsustainable costs and environmental impacts of staging the event.
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I completely agree. The Olympic movement is going to be in serious danger if it continues to bloat to the point where no country can host it without risking bankruptcy.

The requirement for host nations to spend enormous sums of money on facilities is unsustainable. Especially now the world has seen that there can be uncertainty in ability to host large events.

MsZem said:
Back in 2017 there was an Olympic Days promotional event in Paris as part of the 2024 bid. They set up sports stuff all over the city, including a running track in the middle of the Seine. It was so much fun
:)


So much of the Olympics is essentially inaccessible to the public given the scope and cost of the event. Finding a way to bring the games closer to regular people, like Paris did in 2017, would be a really good thing.
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Sounds fun. Although unfortunately I expect terrorism scares would limit too much of that on a larger scale. France will probably have enough on its plate even keeping safe the events stuffed behind layers of security.
 
starrynight said:
The requirement for host nations to spend enormous sums of money on facilities is unsustainable. Especially now the world has seen that there can be uncertainty in ability to host large events.
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Los Angeles built few if any new facilities when it hosted the Olympics in 1984, and it will build few if any when it hosts them in 2028. The same will be true of Paris, where the only new permanent facility will be the Olympic village. I understand why the IOC wants to find new host cities around the world, but perhaps it would be better served by having the both the Summer and Winter Games cycle through a small number of hosts that might stage the games every 16-24 years.
 
@starrynight It's not just the facility costs that are unsustainable. It's also the costs of making a bid for the Games - not just the costs of preparing and submitting a bid that meets the IOC's specifications (that can be more than $50 million), but also the amount of revenue that the IOC takes from the Games and also the costs of hosting the IOC itself before and during the events. This is a really good analysis explaining the process and explaining why so few Games actually make a profit. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games

The IOC should be asking itself why fewer cities/countries are submitting bids to host the Games, and adjusting its own expectations to what the market is willing to bear. It also needs to addressing the climate of corruption and cronyism within its own operations. Replacing race-walking with breakdancing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 
overedge said:
The IOC should be asking itself why fewer cities/countries are submitting bids to host the Games, and adjusting its own expectations to what the market is willing to bear.
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www.olympic.org

Olympic Agenda 2020 - Strategic Roadmap for the Olympic Movement

Official source of information on the Olympic Agenda 2020. See how the IOC is safeguarding the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and strengthening sport in society.
www.olympic.org www.olympic.org
More IOC news releases on the topic of future host elections (going back to 2019): https://www.olympic.org/news/future-host-election
 
Thank you, @Sylvia!

It's good to see that the IOC is apparently thinking about some of these issues, but this article on the linked site demonstrates IMO that some of its thinking has not changed enough.
www.olympic.org

Olympic Agenda 2020 reduces candidature budgets by around 80 per cent - Olympic News

Independently audited accounts of the Candidature Process for the Olympic Winter Games 2026 show the average budget was less than USD 5 million
www.olympic.org www.olympic.org

This story claims that there was an "independent audit" of the 2026 bid process. But it doesn't say who the independent auditor was, or what parts of the bid process they were mandated to look at. It doesn't provide a link to the full audit report, so that people can assess the results or the process for themselves. It says that some of the bidding costs are now being paid by the IOC itself, but it doesn't have very much detail on which costs those are.

It's this kind of "everything's fine" attitude that is still a big problem with the IOC. It likes to throw around buzzwords like "flexibility" and "accountability", but it doesn't provide the information or details to truly be those kind of things.
 
MsZem said:
Baseball was an Olympic sport from 1992 to 2008, and Cuba won 3/5 times

As Vagabond noted, baseball is played in many countries. It was added to the Tokyo games because the game is so popular in Japan, and lots of MLB players come from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other countries that are most certainly not the US.
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There are two problems with baseball - 1) it's not Euro-centric, and 2) the MLB season is going on during the heart of the Olympics and MLB has never been willing, unlike the NHL, to put the league on hiatus in order for it's major stars to compete. If MLB had been willing, it is safe to say that Cuba would not have won 3/5 times, in spite of the depth of baseball talent in Cuba.
 
Karen-W said:
There are two problems with baseball - 1) it's not Euro-centric, and 2) the MLB season is going on during the heart of the Olympics and MLB has never been willing, unlike the NHL, to put the league on hiatus in order for it's major stars to compete. If MLB had been willing, it is safe to say that Cuba would not have won 3/5 times, in spite of the depth of baseball talent in Cuba.
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Add baseball to the Winter Olympics :mitchell:

(the US has only won the World Baseball Classic once, too)
 
Karen-W said:
There are two problems with baseball - 1) it's not Euro-centric, and 2) the MLB season is going on during the heart of the Olympics and MLB has never been willing, unlike the NHL, to put the league on hiatus in order for it's major stars to compete. If MLB had been willing, it is safe to say that Cuba would not have won 3/5 times, in spite of the depth of baseball talent in Cuba.
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3) It's only slightly less boring to watch than cricket. :shuffle:
 
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