Half-court hoops Tokyo slam dunk
Adding six mixed events boosts spots for women starting with 2020 Games
The Summer Olympics will grow by 15 events in 2020, the International Olympic Committee announced Friday, adding three-on-three basketball and six events that will involve men and women competing on mixed teams.
The committee added mixed-gender relays in swimming, track and triathlon; mixed team events in archery and judo; and mixed doubles in table tennis.
Amid the additions, one sport will see a net loss in events: Men’s weightlifting will lose one weight class.
The new events — three-on-three hoops is played on a half-court, with 10-minute games (or first to 21points wins) with overtime if necessary — come in addition to five sports that were added for 2020 last year: karate, skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and baseball/softball, which are counted as a single sport by the IOC and will return after missing two Olympics.
“The fascinating new events that we approved today, together with the five new sports that were added to the Tokyo 2020 program last year, represent a step-change in the Olympic program,” the committee president, Thomas Bach, said in a statement. “I am delighted that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will be more youthful, more urban and will include more women.”
In years past, women and men seldom competed together at the Olympics. When tennis was restored in1988, for example, men’s and women’s doubles was included but not mixed doubles.
But mixed events have found favour in international sports and with the IOC in recent years. Mixed-doubles badminton was added for the 1996 Games, and for tennis in 2012.
Mixed relays are a new development in international sports. Swimming added a mixed relay to its world championships in 2015, and it brought intriguing strategic decisions, like whether to start with the slower women or to try to build a big lead with the men.
“I think it’s so fun,” American Missy Franklin said. “Honestly, I think it’s a big testament to swimming for combining men and women competing together. I think that that’s so cool to have that opportunity.”
Swimming will be adding the 4x100 mixed medley relay to the program. Britain won that event at the world championships, with the United States second.
Track’s World Relays competition added a mixed 4x400-metre race this year; the Bahamas beat the United States.
Three-on-three basketball, with separate men’s and women’s events, also was added to the 2020 program. Also on Friday, men’s events were dropped in favour of women’s events in boxing, canoeing and rowing, to bring the games closer to a stated goal of full gender equity. Kit McConnell, IOC sports director, said that 48.8 per cent of athletes would be women, up from 46.1 per cent in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
“We know the importance of female participation in the games at both the event level and the athlete level,” he said.