UKC

Bad news all.  Sport Climbing confirmed, but it sounds like they're sticking with the combined Speed, Lead and Boulder format.

There were all sorts of requests from a wide variety of sports to add disciplines and events, but it sounds like the IOC have turned them all down.

The IFSC website reads differently indicating Boulder and lead are combined with a separate speed event. They also seem to count medals for men and women together even though they are for the same event (2 medals in Tokyo, 4 now for Paris).

The IOC Executive Board also agreed to add Boulder & Lead and Speed competitions to the programme, bringing the total number of medal events for Sport Climbing at Paris 2024 to four, two more than at Tokyo 2020. The number of participating athletes will grow to 68 for Paris 2024, a significant increase from the 40 that will compete at Tokyo 2020 next August.

https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/news/418-sport-climbing-officially-...

Ah yes, I think you're right, the site I got this from has now amended its story.

The accompanying announcement video, which was more like a promo, wasn't very clear and said "Combined Bouldering & Lead, Speed", so I think that's where the confusion came from...

Would have been clearer if they had said Lead & Boulder Combined & Speed?!?!?

Anyway, that's great news.  Would have preferred 3 separate events but it's good news nonetheless. 

Hope it's not scheduled at the same time as the breakdancing, cos I know what I'll be watching.

Remind me when it was that the Olympic motto got changed to "Faster, Higher, Stronger, More entertaining".

Therein lies the logic failure behind modern Olympic sport: Just because some sports are highly entertaining to watch, doesn't mean that anything highly entertaining to watch must, or even could, be sport.

No wonder the Olympics has become such a behemoth, as it's muscled in on circus performers, X-factor and all manner of other performance arts too.

Indeed. I suspect I'm increasingly with a minority view that sport is something you 'do' rather than something you 'watch'.

Having watched countless speed competitions in the square in Chamonix, I’m don’t think entertaining would be an appropriate term. It’s kind of intriguing for the first couple of competitors but then it’s time to wander away and get a beer.

... which kind of demonstrates my point, the implication being that we're not so happy about an event being included that isn't thrilling to watch, whereas we'd be happier for a more entertaining event to be included, even if it doesn't share the qualities traditionally associated with Olympic sport.

It's all part of the IOCs drive to stay relevant and appeal to young audiences, I don't think there's really anything wrong with that. 

The IOC's main income stream is from broadcasting rights and whilst some sports have been contested at the Olympics for generations, they really don't make great viewing so aren't going to pull in large viewing audiences, making their broadcast rights less valuable.

So they're left with a choice, innovate and evolve, adding events and medals to keep the event relevant or become an anachronism and watch as their audience disappear off to watch the world breaking championship on a digital stream put together for a low cost, whilst they're spending enormous amounts of money broadcasting the Air Pistol Shooting competition that nobody is watching.

Of course the Olympics will always have its crown jewels events, the men's 100m final is their most prestige event, but there's a bunch of dross events and sports in there that they need to add to a bit to keep people watching.

FTFY

Goes without saying, of course they need to make a profit, just like any other organisation.  Revenues from Olympic involvement are the major income stream quite a number of International Sports Federations too.  If they didn't get their four yearly cash injection from the IOC they'd have to shrink their operations massively.

One federation used to do some work for would be basically bankrupt by Y4 of each cycle, propped up by shady deals with middle eastern and Asian broadcasters...

As you say, once an organisation like the IOC exists it has to make a profit anyway it can. But it does beg the question: "Does the IOC actually need to exist?" Perhaps it's a dinosaur that has outlived it's usefulness? Does it have any purpose other than perpetuating its own existence (by means fair or foul)?

Are you asking if we need the Olympics, or need the IOC?

The IOC I guess (they are the problem rather than the concept of 'Olympics'), but it hard to see how you could have the latter without the former (in some form or other). Perhaps with some tightly constrained ToRs? Constrained by whom?

And the next "sport" is -------  BREAKDANCING !

I’m not really sure what the problem with the IOC is?

Like you say, If we want there to be an Olympics then there needs To be some sort of umbrella body to organise the thing...

Personally I’d like them to have a more sustainable games model, less reliant on new structures with a more sustainable legacy. But they’re making progress on these...

There are plenty of problems with the IOC: Corruption, lack of accountability and (as you say) no sustainable model, to name just a few. I think the underlying issue though is that they lack definition of what the ultimate purpose of the Olympics is (as far as I know). And hence the only thing they can do is to constantly expand their sphere of influence. They have no incentive to get 'better' because they have no oversight and no competition. They will only work to get bigger and more dominant over whatever they choose to declare to be within their remit. The modern Olympics has become more about the exercise of power (in the IOC) than about the demonstration of physical prowess in the athletes.

All just a personal option, of course. I'd like to be proved wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

I don't mean to sound dismissive but I'm not sure you know that much about what the IOC do and how they work.  You seem to have some basic misassumptions about what the mechanisms are here. 

The IOC's mission and charter are both very clear and easy to find out.  They do have a purpose and a mission other than "expand" and provide a f*cking massive amount of cash (over 90% of their income) to international sports federations the world over.  Quite simply a lot of international sports federations would cease to exist were it not for the Olympics.

Also the IOC don't "choose sports to be under their remit".  International sports federations are formed and apply to become an Olympic sport, having to prove their credentials and jump through a whole heap of rules and regulations to qualify.  The IF's want to join, and then maintain their Olympic status.

Yes there have been instances and allegations of corruption in the past, but they have worked to improve their governance and the scale of corruption is small fry compared to FIFA, UEFA or a whole host of other world governing bodies...  When you have a huge multinational organisation with officials from all of the countries in the world, some of whom have done business in a vastly different culture than ours and vast sums of money corruption is almost inevitable, sadly. 

But while other subjective events are included (gymnastics, synchro swimming, ice skating, diving, dressage and prob more), why not?

Agreed.  

Skateboarding, there's another...

Ultimately the point in the Olympics in the modern world is surely to inspire people to take up sports, so why not? (I'm agreeing with you I think.) 

All of these things require physical fitness and a lot of skill even if some of them aren't obviously about faster /stronger etc. If people get inspired to take up a new sport and improve their lives as a result, great. 

Absolutely, very nice and succinctly put. 

The trouble is that I don't see the influence of the Olympics on sport as being particularly beneficial. It distorts any sport it touches by shifting the emphasis from encouraging broad grass-roots participation toward an elite program based politically inspire chased for medals.

I suppose it depends on what you want from sport. If you think it's mainly about getting more people to watch it on television then I guess you'll be happy with the IOC. However, if you're more of a mind that sport is primarily something you 'do' rather than 'watch' then I'm not convinced. As I said earlier, I suspect I'm in a minority these days in my attitude of 'what is the purpose of sport'. So be it.

Having said all that, I also accept that once sport becomes professional, the shift to most 'watching' rather than 'doing' is inevitable. After all, professional sport is really just entertainment: A few people doing amusing things that lots of people will pay to watch.

Yeah, fair enough. There is evidence that there is some increase in sport participation during and shortly after an Olympics, but that it doesn’t necessarily result in a real long term increase.

However I think the funds created for IFs is certainly beneficial and help participation. All these IFSC events I’ve enjoyed streaming have to paid for somehow...

I don’t think the IOC, or even the Olympics are perfect, but I think they do more good than harm.  Some modernisation and effort on sustainability is needed but I think the same could be said of a lot or organisations!

I look at it the other way around - it's the original freak show for entertainment, Faster, Higher etc is just branding. It's just people running in circles, lifting stuff and jumping about. There people are not curing cancer*.

There's lots of other competitions for people pursuing the edge of performance, but this one has the spectacle, and a few hours of break dancing is insignificant compared to the endless ceremonies and pageantry that your description as X Factor fits perfectly. First it was stadiums, now it's telly. Once they portrayed the winners in marble, now it's Nike logos. It's always been media driven, populist opium for mass consumption.

*I do think the Paralympics is a far more worthy matter with it's benefits to medical and social factors. I rarely watch the Olympics but the Para's are amazing.

Well on that line they should bring poetry back, it's getting that crazy.

That's the big problem, and it's happened in many long standing sports now that the Olympics has become professional and such a major cash cow.

The influence is now away from participation, and towards watching it on the TV - unless you (or your parents) think you're a potential star of the future (and thereby going to get rich and famous). The percentage of finances that goes towards such a small number of elite athletes compared to the pittance granted to the grassroots - who actually pay more in membership/subscriptions than they get back - is disgusting.

I'm not saying i think its a good idea.....I'm a bit torn as to whether or not subjectively judged sports should be included. Others are easy - who took the least time to run 100m? who threw that object the furthest? Who pinned the other competitor the fastest? Who got the highest up that wall? but who was seen to give the best gymnastic performance? Or in this case the best dance interpretation? Stretching it a bit for me, although i'm happy to accept others enjoy it - the ice dancing is one of the most popular winter olympic sports, so why not? It our individual choices as to what we partake in, or watch......

They've been clear that "mind sports" such as chess etc won't be added to the games.

I'd rather watch break dancing (which is pretty awesome, and totally athletic) than swimming (say).  Why are there so many swimming events anyway?  

 "The competitors are lining up for the semi-finals of the men's 162m doggy-paddle, after which we see the heats of the women's 224m alternate arm breast-crawl".  If the IOC is so concerned about viewing figures then why not whittle down events in stuff where there are about 1024 medals for people doing the same repetitive thing, but for marginally different lengths of time or in vaguely different ways.

If you look at the list of sports and amount of medals available (nice table here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_sports ) you can see that there's a gradual increase in amount of sports and events and medals each year and that once a sport is added, it's rare that it loses it's place as an Olympic, in fact it doesn't really seem to happen outside of demonstration events, and most sports seem to be able to add disciplines and medals over the years.

I suspect the IF's become quite dependent on the Olympic so to remove them would have a hugely detrimental affect on the organisation and the wider sport, which is basically the opposite of what the Olympic movement is about so rather than shave down all those boring as hell swimming or shooting or sailing events they just add more events to counterbalance the dross.

And yes.  There are far too f'ing many swimming events.