UKC

The IOC confirmed yesterday that Sport Climbing will be included in the list of Olympic sports at the Paris 2024 Games. On 25 June 2019, the IOC unanimously voted to provisionally include Sport Climbing in the line-up for Paris in what will be the discipline's second Olympic showing after Tokyo 2020 . A separation of Speed from a Combined Boulder and Lead event in the Paris Games will also double the medal count, the number of climbing events and more athletes will be able to compete.

Surely speed climbing has the lowest participation numbers globally than any other Olympic  event in history?

I bet there as many speed climbers as high ski jumping.

I can’t imagine there’s a huge amount of competitors in a lot of the gun events? Speed climbing is a lot more popular in E Europe and Asia. 

I wonder what the least participated sport in the current Olympics is?

Synchronised Swimming?  Archery?

I was wondering about this. Maybe cycling's Madison? Or perhaps equestrian 3-day eventing?

I think you'd be surprised how many eventers there are, and madison is just a version of track cycling. The same ones will do pretty well all the other track events, with the possible exception of the sprint.

i have no idea which olympic sport might have the lowest participation; its an interesting question!

i suspect there will be a number of sports with similar numbers; one of the requirements for olympic inclusion is that it must be preacticed competitively in at least 75 countries (although i have my doubts about skeleton at the winter olympics.......)

My other half used to do Pony club in her youth and the three day eventing format is surprisingly widespread.  I know, I had no idea either!

Archery is very popular. Loads of clubs around, been getting into it myself, got a target set up in my garden, great fun!

(think your reply was meant for me?)

Funnily enough now that I think about it I had a friend at uni who was into Archery.  Had a go myself once, like you say great fun!

Now Keirin.  There can't be many people who do that one as a hobby surely?

The Maddison, Kiren etc are done by people who do multiple track disciplines so probably easier just to dive in and out of the event.

Lowest participation? Probably one the the 'golden' olympic events like 100m sprint. Beyond school age, anyway.

Actually I have a theory that the longer an event is in the olympics the lower the real participation rate is. No idea if that true - would be interesting to see if there's any correlation.

Those two statements seem contradictory.

Are they? I don't know how long the 100m has been in the olympics, but I'd assume a while. Anyway, correlation (<1.0) in a dataset does allow for individual data point not to fit the pattern in isolation.

you've not been to a local athletics league meeting..........its absolutely astonishing how many meetings there are with decent numbers of participants. Lots more in the long distance events (which for me means 800m upwards) which isnt surprising given the number of people who run for general fitness, but the 100m will have a couple of heats and a final for pretty well all age groups up to about 60. i suspect the lower participations are in the field events requiring specialist and unusual eqpt - javelin / pole vault especially, i would think.

You're right, I haven't. So how people do you think there are in the UK that compete regularly at 100m? The world? Yes, javelin would certainly fit my theory (putting aside confirmation bias).

Looking at the other side of the coin, what do you think might be the highest participation sport that is *NOT* in the Olympics? For given given definition of 'sport' of course! Squash? Darts? Fishing  ?

Sorry, I misunderstood your statement. I thought you were referring to event length rather than length of time in the Olympics.

OMG. This stuff is fascinating. It all depends on your own perception and experience. However; when I was into athletics (late 70's / early 80's as a late teenager), there was competition to get into the Gateshead harriers sprint team at all age groups up to about 50 (male) and 40 (female). Jarrow AC were less than 5 miles away, with similar numbers.......etc etc. So in the local league, which had 3 divisions of 8 teams each, there would be regularly 32 competitors per event per age group. In a local league in the north east. Were we any more athletic than anywhere else? I would say not, as I went to Uni in birmingham and it was a similar set up. there were 5 or 6 big clubs just in birmingham itself. I drifted off into other sports (climbing / volleyball), but extrapolating across the country, literally thousands took part in competitive sprinting each week. I could run sub 11s for 100m and couldn't get into the gateshead u20 team. But competed in high jump and hurdles.

more recently, daughter No 2 was into running and went along to a few meets with the local AC. There were more seniors/masters age types than school age competitors. So its still as popular as ever.

When you look past the glamorous national / international events there is almost always a surprisingly large number of participants in a sport. Look at climbing - not that many compete at national level, but look at how many enter bouldering leagues etc i did a few years ago when on the BMC comp Comm, and the number of regular competitors in local comps was way over 10,000. And we are no different in the UK to pretty well anywhere else.......

Possibly squash because of its global reach, possibly bowls, but doesn't have a global reach (but lots of variety of very similar sports), or perhaps netball? That's one sport that maybe doesn't get into the olympics because of its lack of global coverage, but should be in because its massively accessible in terms of equipment needed (a ball) and participation would go through the roof, especially amongst populations without easy access to equipment.

To qualify be an Olympic sport it has to be played by both men and women (albeit not by equal amounts), and although there are men's Netball teams, I think the low levels of participation by men alone would prevent it becoming an Olympic event. 

Snooker? Pool?  Are they sports? 

Snooker/Billiards has come close to being included I think... They've certainly applied... 

absolutely right; this is one I regard as a lost opportunity and where the "olympic effect" would be massively beneficial. Just say (as per other events) there has to be a mens and womens medal, and watch participation increase. The problem is of course, you could say that about lots of sports, but the olympics has a ceiling on medals of 310 (so the increase in climbings allocation in 2024 means someone else has to lose out) and of 10,500 on competitors, otherwise the event becomes logistically ever more difficult.