Fans will have to wait another two years for the next Olympic games as the 2020 Summer Olympics take place in Tokyo, Japan. Winter Olympics fans are eyeing the 2022 Olympics in Beijing for popular events like skiing, snowboards and bobsledding to come back around the Olympic calendar.
The Summer Olympics will kick off on July 24, 2020 with the opening ceremony and run through August 9, 2020. The 2022 Winter Olympics will stretch from February 4 to February 20. According to NBC News, the 2020 Olympics will mark the first time Tokyo has hosted the games since 1964. There will be 339 gold medals awarded in Tokyo.
According to Olympic.org, five new Olympic sports will be introduced at the 2020 games: skateboarding, sports climbing, karate, baseball/softball and surfing.
“The inclusion of the package of new sports will afford young athletes the chance of a lifetime to realise their dreams of competing in the Olympic Games – the world’s greatest sporting stage – and inspire them to achieve their best, both in sport and in life,” Yoshiro Mori, Tokyo 2020 president, said in a statement.
IOC President Thomas Bach explained in a press release that the added sports are aimed to attract younger people to the Olympics.
We want to take sport to the youth. With the many options that young people have, we cannot expect any more that they will come automatically to us. We have to go to them. Tokyo 2020’s balanced proposal fulfils all of the goals of the Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendation that allowed it. Taken together, the five sports are an innovative combination of established and emerging, youth-focused events that are popular in Japan and will add to the legacy of the Tokyo Games.
According to the Japan Times, Tokyo beat out Istanbul and Madrid to win the bid.
“We are confident our Japanese friends will be able to provide excellent Games. They are the safe pair of hands they describe,” former IOC President Jacques Rogge told the Japan Times. “They will provide secure Games, well organized with the welfare of the athletes in mind. I’m quite sure Tokyo 2020 will put the athletes at the center of the Games.”
Winter Olympics fans could see a familiar face in Tokyo as infamous snowboarder Shaun White is considering competing in the first-ever Olympic skateboarding competition.
“Man, it’s wild. I assumed at some point in my lifetime, skateboarding would get into the Olympics, but I’m just happy that it’s come at a time when I feel physically and mentally capable of actually competing and pursuing that goal and dream,” White told The Washington Post.
White has stopped short of officially announcing he will make a run at the 2020 games.
“I’ll have to make a hard decision at that point,” White told The Washington Post. “To be at the top of the game of snowboarding and then decide all of a sudden to let my competitors have two years of practice on me while I pursue skateboarding . . . it’s a big decision. It’s a lot to sacrifice to go for something like that, so I’m going to make that choice in time.”
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Fans Eye 2020 Olympics in Tokyo