During the swimming competition last week, Rowdy Gaines got pretty animated while discussing Katie Ledecky and the fact that the women's 1500 meter freestyle isn't part of the Olympic program. They swim both the 800 and 1500 freestyle for both men and women at the World Championships, but in the Olympics, it's only the one long distance race each. They also swim a 50 in each stroke at Worlds, but not at the Olympics.
Given the appetite most of the world has for Olympic swimming, why isn't every event held at the World Championships contested at the Olympics? And, frankly, adding them wouldn't be very hard. There's currently 32 events on the Olympic swimming program, which means there are four finals on each of the eight days of competition. Adding the eight other events contested at Worlds (men's 800 free, women's 1500 free, men's & women's 50 back, fly and breast) brings that total to 40. So, you have five finals a day instead of four. You're not really adding any athletes, either, since many swimmers would just add the 50 in their discipline to their personal schedules.
It's not just swimming where they don't contest every event at the Olympics. In fencing, there are six individual events, but only four team events. They rotate which of the three team events isn't held at each Olympics. Why? What difference would it make if they had 12 fencing events instead of 10 and were actually able to have a men's and women's team competition with each weapon?
Likewise, in rowing, the commentators were talking about how the U.S. women's four is nearly as good as the dominant women's eight. Then I noticed that the women's four isn't even an Olympic event! Yet the men's four is. There are 14 rowing events--eight men's and six women's. The men have a four and a lightweight four, while the women don't. How about replacing that men's lightweight four with a women's four?
One event that is being replaced with a women's event in Tokyo is the men's whitewater doubles canoe. The women's whitewater singles canoe will be contested instead. That one at least makes sense. They have the whitewater singles kayak for both men and women, but the other two whitewater events are men's canoe, so I've got no problem with evening that out. However, in flatwater canoe/kayak, there's still a big disparity. There are 12 events, only four of which are for women. The number of women's flatwater canoe events? Zero.
A few years ago, the IOC made cycling balance out its men's and women's Olympic programs, and sailing has the same number of men's and women's events, as well as one that's mixed. Wrestling just did the same thing. They added two weight classes for women, and there are now six weight classes in all three wrestling disciplines. Boxing had to adjust its weight classes when the women's divisions were added in London, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them adjusted again to make room for another women's class.
There are plenty of critics who like to point out that even though women's participation in the Olympics has reached a record number, there are still more men's events than women's. Now, there are a number of reasons for this, so I don't view it as a particular problem. For example, in gymnastics there are eight men's events and only six women's...because the men compete on six apparati and the women four, so there are two more event finals for men. (There are also the women's-only sports like rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming that help balance out the numbers.)
We also have no idea if women even compete in some of these disciplines outside of the Olympics. When wrestling was ridiculously dropped for a few months, that question was actually posed to federation officals prior to the vote about whether or not it would be put right back in. And they noted that women have only show interest in the freestyle discipline, which is why Greco-Roman wrestling is contested only by men. Just like we don't know if that's the reason there are more shooting events for men than women (or if women do those canoe events I was referring to).
In the past (meaning, under Jacques Rogge), they were hesitant to expand the Olympic program beyond its current size, both in regard to number of events and number of athletes. If a sport wanted to add one event, it had to drop another. But seeing as they let Tokyo add six sports (I'm sorry, but baseball and softball are NOT the same), some of which have multiple events, to the program for 2020, that's clearly not as big of a concern anymore.
I can understand the worry about adding too many more athletes. There are already over 10,500 at the Summer Games. But I never got the idea of an event cap. Especially because most, if not all, of the events I'd like to see added would feature athletes already competing at the Olympics. And you wouldn't need to construct any additional venues or really adjust the schedule that much.
And I'm not talking about adding events in every sport, either. (How are you going to add an event in, say, soccer?) I'm talking about adding maybe 30 events to the program, using, for the most part, athletes that are already competing and venues that are already being used. That doesn't make the Olympics too big. And it gives athletes the chance at more Olympic medals, which is the reason they all go in the first place.
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