Last week at the IOC meetings in Switzerland, they recommended that all five sports that Tokyo 2020 organizers proposed be added for those Games move forward to a vote of the entire IOC membership. This vote won't take place until August just before the Olympics start, but it's considered a formality. Baseball/softball, sport climbing, surfing, skateboarding and karate are thisclose to becoming official Olympic sports.
My excitement for the new additions is lukewarm at best. I'm thrilled about the reintroduction of baseball and softball, which never should've been removed from the Olympic program in the first place. But the fundamental flaw of this system where the host city/country can propose the new sports is that we may see them come and go depending on where the Olympics are, which I don't like at all. Either you're an Olympic sport or you're not. It shouldn't be on a Games-by-Games basis.
As stupid as the old process seemed (the one where wrestling was voted out, then immediately voted back in), it at least set up sports to be in the Olympics for the long haul. Golf and rugby are only guaranteed for Rio and Tokyo, but is there really any doubt that they're going to become permanent fixtures (especially rugby)? Ditto with wrestling, which never should've been removed in the first place.
I'd much rather see sports federations have to present themselves to the entire IOC membership and have the vote for inclusion come from the entire body, rather than the organizers of a particular Olympics. To me, that system is much fairer.
But this is the system we're stuck with for the time being, and this is an exciting time for those six sports, most notably baseball and softball. They were unceremoniously cut following Beijing, and their return will coincide with the Olympics returning to Asia. The symmetry of that is pretty cool, seeing as the only continent where baseball is bigger than it is in Asia is the Americas. Especially in Japan, baseball's popularity is huge. (And Japan is the defending softball gold medalists from 2008.)
The IOC did give Tokyo guidelines for how many athletes can be added, so the baseball and softball tournaments will have only six teams instead of the ideal eight. Six should work out OK for softball, but that baseball tournament is going to be missing some of the sport's heavy hitters. Especially since they'll have to include at least one team from Europe/Africa, which means a max of two from the Americas and two other Asian teams along with Japan.
One of the IOC's requests for the baseball tournament is not going to happen, though. They want Major Leaguers. Logistically that's impossible. Major League teams play 162 games in 180 days. They're not taking a break for two weeks or 10 days or whatever it is in the middle of the season, especially just after the All-Star Break. And it's not fair to ask the players who aren't chosen for their respective Olympic teams (which would be a vast majority of them) to go that long without games, either. Baseball's all about repetition. That's why they play everyday.
So how can hockey do it? Well, for starters, NHL teams don't play everyday. They play 82 games in six months, so you can take a three-week Olympic break and still have plenty of wiggle room to make up the missed games. It just means you get fewer days off between games during the season. And while a vast majority of hockey's better players participate in the Olympics, the rest do get that time off...which they probably appreciate during the grind of an 82-game hockey season.
Anyway, I digress. The IOC is pretty adamant on their stance that they want Major League players, but it's highly unlikely the owners and MLBPA are going to budge. The best compromise might be to send a team of Triple-A players that are on Major League 40-man rosters. The Japanese and Korean leagues have vowed to shut down for the Olympics, but that's not going to happen in the US. The owners aren't giving up two weeks' worth of games in the middle of the summer (when attendance is always higher), and they're not going to start earlier/end later to accommodate the players taking a long trip to Japan.
This is a good problem to have at least. I'd much rather baseball try and figure out what players to send and how over the alternative, which is no Olympics at all. For softball, which was unfairly grouped with baseball in 2005 when they were voted out together, it'll be like they never left. The Olympics were softball's biggest stage and will be again.
Eventually, the IOC realized that they made a mistake with baseball and softball. They would've been voted back in for Tokyo already if they hadn't made that equally boneheaded decision to drop wrestling. And that's exactly what I meant when I said the sport program should be determined by the IOC, not the individual Olympic organizers.
Baseball and softball should be in the Olympics. They were before, they will be again, and I think they will be in a future that extends beyond 2020 (especially if LA wins the 2024 Games). The other sports, though? Do you really think "Olympics" when you think of skateboarding? Or surfing? And do we really need another martial art? Not to be mean, but how is karate any different than taekwondo? Sport climbing is the only one of the other four that I'm on board with.
Whether or not those other sports belong in the Olympics is a matter for a different day. The biggest takeaway from Tokyo's chosen new sports is that baseball and softball are back where they belong as a part of the Olympic family. And that's something worth celebrating.
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