Carving for gold

Skateboarding to be included at Tokyo Olympics 2020
By Alex James Taylor | Current affairs | 5 August 2016
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Top Image: Courtesy of Connor Widdows

This week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted unanimously to include skateboarding in the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, along with karate, surfing, sports climbing and baseball.

The vote, described as “the most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic programme in modern history,” will not see any of the 28 events already scheduled for Tokyo 2020 replaced, instead adding 18 events and 474 athletes.

Both the IOC and the Tokyo Organizing Committee placed an emphasis on getting a younger generation of athletes excited about the Games.

“We want to take sport to the youth,” said IOC president Thomas Bach. “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. Taken together, the five sports are an 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 Olympic skateboarding contests will include men’s and women’s park and street events, with a total of 80 skaters — 40 men and 40 women — competing in them. However, not everyone in the skateboarding community is pleased with it becoming an olympic sport, claiming that it can’t be judged as subjectively as the likes of gymnastics and athletics, whilst also commenting on its counterculture history, provoking that age old debate: underground Vs mainstream.

The Rio 2016 olympics kick off today.


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