Olympic Sports

Olympic sports are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games. The 2020 Summer Olympics included 33 sports;[1] the 2022 Winter Olympics included seven sports.[2][3] Each Olympic sport is represented by an international governing body, namely an International Federation (IF).[4]

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) establishes a hierarchy of sports, disciplines, and events.[4] According to this hierarchy, each Olympic sport can be subdivided into multiple disciplines, which are often mistaken as distinct sports. Examples include swimming and water polo, which in the Olympic scheme are disciplines of the sport of "Aquatics" (represented by World Aquatics),[5] and figure skating and speed skating, which are each disciplines of the sport of "ice skating" (represented by the International Skating Union).[6] In turn, disciplines are subdivided into events, for which Olympic medals are awarded.[4] The number and types of events may change slightly from one Olympiad to another.

Olympic Sports

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Previous Olympic Games included sports that are no longer included in the current program, such as polo and tug of war.[7] Known as "discontinued sports", these have been removed due to either a lack of interest or the absence of an appropriate governing body for the sport.[4] Some sports that were competed at the early Games and later dropped by the IOC, have managed to return to the Olympic program, for example archery, which made a comeback in 1972, and tennis, which was reintroduced in 1988. The Olympics have often included one or more demonstration sports, normally to promote a local sport from the host country or to gauge interest in an entirely new sport.[8] Some such sports, like baseball and curling, were added to the official Olympic program (in 1992 and 1998, respectively). Baseball was discontinued after the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, only to be revived again for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which saw the introduction of new disciplines within a number of existing Summer Olympic sports as well as several new sports, such as karate and skateboarding, making their Olympic debuts. Breakdancing will make its debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and Ski Mountaineering will debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The term "sport" in Olympic terminology refers to all events sanctioned by an international sport federation, a definition that may differ from the common meaning of the word "sport". One sport, by Olympic definition, may comprise several disciplines, which would often be regarded as separate sports in common usage.

On some occasions, notably in the case of snowboarding, the IOC agreed to add a sport that previously had a separate international federation to the Olympics on condition that they dissolve their governing body and instead affiliate with an existing Olympic sport federation, therefore not increasing the number of Olympic sports.

An event, by IOC definition, is a competition that leads to the award of medals. Therefore, the sport of aquatics includes a total of 46 Olympic events, of which 32 are in the discipline of swimming, eight in diving, and two each in artistic swimming, water polo, and open water swimming. The number of events per sport ranges from a minimum of two (until 2008, there were sports with only one event) to a maximum of 47 in athletics, which despite its large number of events and its diversity is not divided into disciplines except on an informal basis - the division between, for example, swimming and diving in aquatics is not replicated within athletics by divisions between track and field events, or stadium and road events.

The sports that are eligible for inclusion in the programme, beside the current Olympic International Federations, are only those "governed by other IFs recognised by the IOC", as per the Bye-law to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (1.3.2). If this criterion is met, then the opportunity to propose additional sports to the programme is at the full discretion of the respective Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and subject to the final decision of the IOC Session.[12]

However, there are indicative thresholds which restrict the addition of new sports, disciplines and events. According to Bye-law 3.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter, in the edition of 2021: "Unless agreed otherwise with the relevant OCOG [Organising Committee for the Olympic Games], the following approximate numbers shall apply:

The only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic program are athletics, aquatics (the discipline of swimming has been in every Olympics), cycling, fencing, and gymnastics (the discipline of artistic gymnastics has been in every Olympics).

The only winter sports that were included in all Winter Olympic Games are skiing (only nordic skiing), skating (figure skating and speed skating), and ice hockey. Figure skating and ice hockey were also included in the Summer Olympics before the Winter Olympics were introduced in 1924.

For most of the 20th century, demonstration sports were included in many Olympic Games, usually to promote a non-Olympic sport popular in the host country, or to gauge interest and support for the sport.[8]The competitions and ceremonies in these sports were identical to official Olympic sports, except that the medals were not counted in the official record.Some demonstration sports, like baseball and curling, were later added to the official Olympic program.This changed when the International Olympic Committee decided in 1989 to eliminate demonstration sports from Olympic Games after 1992.[14] An exception was made in 2008, when the Beijing Organizing Committee received permission to organize a wushu tournament.[15][16]

In previous years, sports that depend primarily on mechanical propulsion, such as motor sports, could not be considered for recognition as Olympic sports, though there were power-boating events in the early days of the Olympics before this rule was enacted by the IOC.[4][17] Part of the story of the founding of aviation sports' international governing body, the FAI, originated from an IOC meeting in Brussels, Belgium on 10 June 1905.[18] The relevant strict clause excluding motorsports, stating that "Sports, disciplines or events in which performance depends essentially on mechanical propulsion are not accepted"[19] has been removed from the Olympic Charter.[20][21] FIA[22] and FAI[23] are included in the International Federations recognised by the International Olympic Committee,[24] and therefore in theory could be eligible.

Previous Olympic Games included sports which are no longer present on the current program, like polo and tug of war.[3] In the early days of the modern Olympics, the organizers were able to decide which sports or disciplines were included on the program, until the IOC took control of the program in 1924. As a result, a number of sports were on the Olympic program for relatively brief periods before 1924.[4] These sports, known as discontinued sports, were removed because of lack of interest or absence of an appropriate governing body, or because they became fully professional at the time that the Olympic Games were strictly for amateurs, as in the case of tennis.[4]Several discontinued sports, such as archery and tennis, were later readmitted to the Olympic program (in 1972 and 1984, respectively). Curling, which was an official sport in 1924 and then discontinued, was reinstated as Olympic sport in 1998.

The only sports that have been dropped from the Olympics since 1936 are baseball and softball, which were both voted out by the IOC Session in Singapore on 11 July 2005,[25] a decision that was reaffirmed on 9 February 2006,[26] and reversed on 3 August 2016.[27] These sports were last included in 2008, although officially they remain recognized in the Olympic Charter as a single sport, since both are now governed internationally by the World Baseball Softball Confederation. Therefore, the number of sports in the 2012 Summer Olympics was dropped from 28 to 26.

At the first Olympic Games, nine sports were contested.[36] Since then, the number of sports contested at the Summer Olympic Games has gradually risen to thirty-six on the program for 2028[35]. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, however, the number of sports fell back to twenty-six following an IOC decision in 2005 to remove baseball and softball from the Olympic program. These sports retain their status as Olympic sports with the possibility of a return to the Olympic program in future games.[25] At the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen on 9 October 2009, the IOC voted to reinstate both golf and rugby to the Olympic program, meaning that the number of sports to be contested in 2016 was once again 28.[37]

Eight of the 32 sports at the 2024 Summer Olympics consist of multiple disciplines. Each discipline is marked with a unique 3-character identifier code by the IOC.[38][39] Disciplines from the same sport are grouped under the same color:

The following sports or disciplines have been demonstrated at the Summer Olympic Games for the years shown, but have never been included on the official Olympic program. Organizers of the 1900 and 1904 Olympic Games, which were staged in conjunction with world's fairs, included numerous sporting events on an equal footing under their programmes. Historians generally regard many of these as not satisfying retrospective inclusion criteria to qualify as "official."[40] However, the IOC has never made a determination regarding which events were official and which were not.[41] Designation of official demonstration sports began with the 1912 Olympic Games.

Summer Olympic sports are divided into categories based on popularity, gauged by: television viewers (40%), internet popularity (20%), public surveys (15%), ticket requests (10%), press coverage (10%), and number of national federations (5%). The category determines the share the sport's International Federation receives of Olympic revenue.[47][48] 17dc91bb1f