Summer Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028 Sports Programme Road to LA 2028

[mpjmcevoy 362]

  On 10/13/2023 at 11:18 PM, Rafa Maciel said:

I wonder what Athens and London did to p*ss off the IOC to the extent that they didn't get to add any new sports to the schedule when they hosted.

 

1992 Barcelona: Adds Badminton

1996 Atlanta: Adds Softball, Mountain Biking and Beach Volleyball

2000 Sydney: Add Taekwondo, Triathlon and Trampoline Gymnastics

2004 Athens: 

2008 Beijing: Adds BMX Racing and Open Water Swimming

2012 London....Adds no new sports and drops baseball and softball.

2016 Rio: Adds Rugby 7s and Golf

2020 Tokyo: Adds Skateboarding, Surfing, BMX Freestyle, Sport Climbing, 3x3 Basketball & Karate

2024 Paris: Adds Breaking

2028 Los Angeles: Adds Flag Football, Cricket, Softball/Baseball, Squash & Lacrosse

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Athen's likely finance problems were known from an early stage - Greece is by far the smallest recent host - it also marked the end of an aggressive expansion phase with 4 entirely new sports, never mind disciplines or events.

It does seem mad that Rugby and Golf - which clearly would have made sense to include in London - had to wait to 2016 and a country not wildly keen on either. Squash should also probably have made its bow in London, as might cricket. The problem seems like the IOC can never stick to a plan

[mpjmcevoy 362]

  On 10/13/2023 at 8:29 PM, Federer91 said:

Imagine that a decade ago, i thought Bach would be an improvement in IOC leadership. Oh how, how wrong i was...

 

Note to my current and future self - Every changes that are going to happen from now on are going to be worse and worse. 

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I didn't. Rogge was a bit ineffective, but he was relatively straight - a week pontiff but not a totally corrupted one. Bach was, to me anyway, a Rodrigo Borgia figure from the outset.

[thiago_simoes 1,423]

I can't say I'm disappointed with the sports because, being honest, I don't really care about the Olympics anymore. All I care about is gymnastics, so as long as artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics are part of the program, nothing else matters. Needless to say, I won't watch any of the new additions, but I also have to say that not one of these sports seem interesting to me in the slightest.

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by thiago_simoes

[mpjmcevoy 362]

  On 10/13/2023 at 8:38 PM, NearPup said:

Modern Pentathlon is completly getting rid of show jumping for all International competitions.

 

Because of the horse punching scandal thing (at least that's the stated reason, I think the image of the Modern Pentathlon show jumping event being a lottery both because of the horses but also because the athletes are really bad riders was getting to be too much of a PR issue)

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The problems in MP are longstanding - if you include riding, it essentially becomes an extended Equestrian event (that was, originally, uniquely, solely for actual cavalry officers which is a giveaway of the element at the heart of the sport) with all the universality problems that creates - worse, while a small nation might produce one or two accomplished horsepersons with their own horses, MP insists and depends on strange horses being volunteered to be ridden by non specialists - often from countries with no equestrian tradition at all - and therefore not much in the way of horses to practice on.

 

And when you have problems even with strong equestrian nations like Germany, it simply highlights that, fun and exciting as the jumping element can be, it's kind of like the famous description of the Charge of the Light Brigade  - 'c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre' - it is magnificent, but it's not war. Well, increasingly the showjumping was magnificent, but it was not sport, it was 'it's a knockout/jeux sans frontieres' - the excitement was who would get the dud horse. Ninja Warrior looks silly in a sports context, but no sillier than the riding sometimes did.

 

So, given it was no longer a military only event, it had moved away from the original de Coubertain idea anyway - and de Coubertain's whimsy is the only reason the sport exsts and is still has its spot in the Games. how do you preserve at least an idea of it? Well, you need to look, I suppose, at what the heart of the sport is, what is it really testing.

 

If it's really an Equestrian event, then it ought to be run as such - probably using athletes own horses - indeed, the three day event has an odd element of it as it is, because if you step back, Eventing is a way of basically getting cross-country racing/steeplechasing into the Games, at least in a kind of mini TT format.

 

Once you allow civilians into MP, you already change the nature of the challenge - it is no longer testing actual cavalry soldiers as originally designed by PdC. So either the point of the sport is gone, or you find a slightly new point. The new point, I would argue, was to create an event of five deliberately very different disciplines which in some sense echoes the theme of the escape of a soldier from enemy territory. And to do so without the increasing farce of strange horses, which the IOC were simply not going to tolerate.

 

Personally, in terms of 'escape of a soldier' and 5 very different disciplines, I think the balance is slightly wrong -  a laser run AND an obstacle course seems to make running an element twice over. If it had been me - mad as it'll sound, I'd have leaned into the combat theme - we already have 'sword and pistol' - why not add 'bare hands' - a truncated form of judo (a kind of bracket ranking system or swiss system for a limited number of golden point bouts), for example, and then move the obstacle course element into the Laser run - the added idea of course being that the unusual exertions of the arms will affect the shooting, as it would in an actual escape.

 

So now your event is -

• swordfight your way out of the battle,
• swim across a river,
• fight unarmed an adversary you encounter on the other side,
• take his pistol, then run across country and around and across obstacles, and hold off enemy with the same pistol
• before reaching the border.

 

As for Equestrian Pentathlon as we would presumably now call it, that sport may be preserved outside the Olympics by UIPM, perhaps included as part of the World Games, or even the Continental Games in the IOC tradition. Hell, it may even return to its older, more traditional format of separate running and shooting.

Edited October 13, 2023 by mpjmcevoy

[Makedonas 2,194]

So they can add breaking, sport climbing, lacrosse, squash, flag football, 3x3 basketball, and all these other ridiculous sports that we don't participate/do well in, but they just had to get rid of lightweight rowing which we are actually good in and win medals 

[rybak 3,239]

It was somewhere told or not if quotas limit will increase, stay the same or will be again smaller, after adding those five new sports? 

[NearPup 3,192]

  On 10/13/2023 at 11:27 PM, mpjmcevoy said:

Athen's likely finance problems were known from an early stage - Greece is by far the smallest recent host - it also marked the end of an aggressive expansion phase with 4 entirely new sports, never mind disciplines or events.

It does seem mad that Rugby and Golf - which clearly would have made sense to include in London - had to wait to 2016 and a country not wildly keen on either. Squash should also probably have made its bow in London, as might cricket. The problem seems like the IOC can never stick to a plan

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It’s also mad that surfing and skateboarding didn’t start in Rio.

[Olympian1010 8,068]

  On 10/14/2023 at 1:12 AM, rybak said:

It was somewhere told or not if quotas limit will increase, stay the same or will be again smaller, after adding those five new sports? 

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It's a little unclear at the moment. The IOC seems open to ignoring the original quota limit, but still wants to be as close to it as possible.

[mpjmcevoy 362]

  On 10/14/2023 at 2:43 AM, Olympian1010 said:

It's a little unclear at the moment. The IOC seems open to ignoring the original quota limit, but still wants to be as close to it as possible.

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The quota is arbitrary. Of course we need to avoid bloat, but in a situation like LA that is clearly willing and able to be a three ring circus, holding back the numbers seems a bit pointless. Better, honestly, to have a core, with a proper quota worked out for that core, and then let the organisers prepare what they want in quota terms for 'additional' events. If they want to be crazy and introduce FOUR new team events, let them but on their own head be it.

 

Losing the lightweight rowing seems poor form too; homogenises a sport you claim to want more diversity for, to include a form of rowing pretty much exclusive by design to coastal nations. It's be one thing where it additional, but chopping of the legs of lightweight rowing.

 

If boxing eventually gets the green light I think we're now looking at about 350 events.

[Dolby 738]

  On 10/13/2023 at 11:22 PM, mpjmcevoy said:

I wonder if in the case of South America, we might not have pan-american qualification - or even an unusual split of one Caribbean spot, and one mainland pan-american spot, with Guyana having to join its West Indie brethren in the Caribbean qualification comp. IS a six team tournament really going to have a one per continent rule when there is such disparity between the continents? Are organisers really going to forgoe the chance of IND v PAK to accommodate Guyana, or Surinam - can't see that

 

I think somehow we're gonna end up with USA, Europe 1 (almost certainly GBR, although outside chance of Ireland or Netherlands), (Asia 1) IND or PAK, Africa 1 (RSA), (Oceania 1) AUS and a.n.o probably a playoff between Pan America 1 (Say TRI) and Asia 2 (PAK or IND)

 

An eight team comp would make much more sense in that context with guaranteed spots for Pan America 1 and Asia 2, and a grand final qualifier for the eighth spot., but it is what it is.

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For 6 team tournament in LA: 

 

USA: Host + Pan American quota

Asia/Europe/Africa and Oceania: 1 quota each

 

And 1 final quota for World Ranking. (I would prefer qualification tournament but ICC would almost surely chose ranking) 

 

If somehow they do get 8 team tournament for men, then there is a chance that there will be one qualification tournament for final spot and 2 spots being available for rankings.