Five New Sports for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

The summer Olympics will be taking place in a few months in Tokyo, Japan. So much is expected of the event that draws billions of fans from across the globe, and thousands of participants in different sporting disciplines.

This edition will see five new sports introduced for the first time ever in the event that takes place once in every four years.

Going by the wave and taste of the current generation of sportsmen and women, some of the new entries show just how much is expected of sports in a few years’ time. We take a look at the five new sports, what they entail, and the expectations.

#1. Baseball/Softball

Baseball has grown in popularity in the Asian nation of Japan, which is seen as one of the driving forces behind the sport being considered as one of the new sports for 2020 Olympics games. It is inspired by the once popular game of Rounders played in Britain in the 18^th century.

The bat and ball game features two teams of 9 players each taking turns to play offensive or defensive. The team pitching and fielding is the defending team, whereas the team on offensive is the one batting.

#2. Karate

Surprisingly, Karate is not a new game, but it was yet to be considered for the Olympics until 2020. Other martial arts such as boxing, judo, tae kwon do, and wrestling have all been fixtures in the Olympics, so it was only a matter of time before the introduction of Karate.

Karate is a combination of martial arts skills, involving kicking, punching, knee and elbow strikes, and other techniques that involve the use of knives and spears.

#3. Skateboarding

Skateboarding has been added to the 2020 Olympics with the purpose of maintaining the relevance of the games for the millennial generation. For a long time, this sport has been viewed as a counter-culture sport involving dynamic moves on a special wooden board designed with a set of two pairs of wheels.

Two disciplines; Park and Street, will feature in the upcoming Olympics, where Park involves the use of a series of ramps to skate on. Street, on the other hand, involves skating on a designated course with reproduction of barriers naturally occurring in an urban setting.

#4. Sport climbing

This is a new discipline in the better-known rock climbing category. The 2020 Olympics will see contestants climbing on man-made climbing walls, whereby 3 formats; lead climbing, bouldering, and speed climbing will be run.

Each individual format is unique on its own, but bouldering is certainly the most technical within rock climbing.

#5. Surfing

There were efforts to bring surfing and skateboarding to the Olympics in previous editions, but it was only until this year that the sport was considered. It will be seen as an effort to grant surfing novices an opportunity for exposure and a competitive edge now and in the future.

Surfers during this year’s Olympics will ride a real wave at a beach outside of Tokyo in the men and women categories. The competition will be determined by the availability of a surfable wave, therefore, there will be a waiting period to allow the ideal conditions possible for surfing.