The opening ceremony for this year’s Olympic Games is set to get underway tomorrow, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) already has its eye on 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. On Wednesday, the IOC voted to include five sport [sport climbing, karate, baseball/softball, and surfing], including a unanimous vote to include skateboarding.
The vote, which took place during the 129th IOC Session in Rio de Janeiro, the site of this year’s Summer Games, was the culmination of a lengthy campaign to bring skateboarding to the Olympics. Although the decision was anticipated in the last year, and welcomed, by many industry insiders, the announcement is nonetheless polarizing for the action sports community, with the social media blowing up with both negative and positive feedback for the decision.
As announced today, though, Olympic skateboarding will operate under the oversight of the Tokyo 2020 Skateboarding Commission [which sounds like an awesome commission] which consists of chairman Gary Ream, president of the International Skating Federation; Simone Masserini, executive director of the FIRS; and Neal Hendrix, pro skater and ISF athlete representative.
Although Gary Ream acknowledged skateboarding “is not all about competition; it’s also a lifestyle,” he told the Los Angeles Times in October that stamping the sport with the Olympic rings would “not … satisfy everybody” but would nevertheless “come close.”
The IOC’s proposal on new sport explains that skateboarding is “a youthful and urban-oriented sport” and that the “top skateboarders in the world also have a strong digital presence and influence with millions of followers on social media.”
The Olympic contests is set to include men’s and women’s park and street events, with a total of 80 skaters—40 men and 40 women—competing in them. The IOC expects skating to draw a younger audience to the Games. Before it voted, it screened a video that featured a series of skate clips and renderings of the contests themselves:
The 2020 Summer Olympics will take place in Tokyo from July 24 to August 9.