Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Five new sports set to feature at next summer's Games

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In August 2016, the International Olympic Committee approved five new sports for Tokyo, bringing the total number to 33. Here’s what you can expect to see next summer...

Baseball/softball

Adding baseball and softball to the Olympic programme is far from a Games first, with both sports having previously featured together from 1996 to 2008, but both were scrapped for London 2012 and the suggestion is that Tokyo may prove to be a one-off return.

Hopes that MLB might follow the lead set by the NBA with regards to its star players and the Olympics looks likely to fall on deaf ears, meaning the big earners and star turns of the American and National Leagues will be absent when the Games come round.

Karate

The IOC first voted on the addition of karate way back in 2009. Hopes for 2020 were initially dashed in a vote four years later, before karate won approval in the build-up to the last Games to make its Olympic debut at the birthplace of the sport more than a century earlier.

Eight medals will be awarded in a sport separated into two disciplines. Two medals are on offer in kata, where competitors are judged on their techniques; the other six are awarded in kumite, the more recognisable discipline of one-on-one fights lasting up to three minutes each.

Skateboarding

Young British hope: Sky Brown is hoping to represent her nation
PA

The thinking of both the IOC and Tokyo 2020 is to include sports aimed at inspiring a younger generation. As International Skateboarding Federation President Gary Ream put it: “Skateboarding leads the world in terms of socially connected and technologically savvy young participants.” Four gold medals are up for grabs across two disciplines: park and street.

Winter Olympic snowboard champion Shaun White expressed an interest in taking part, while Britain’s Sky Brown, who will be 12 when the Games begin, is also aiming to become an Olympian.

Surfing

The first Olympic surfing competition will take place 40 miles outside Tokyo on Shidashita Beach. The action will play out over just two days, with a male and female champion. Kelly Slater, at 47 the sport’s elder statesman, is keen on competing.

Heats will last 20 to 25 minutes, with the top two going on to the next round. In all, 20 men and 20 women are expected to line up.

Sport climbing

New heights: Shauna Coxsey wants to add Olympic gold to her World Cup climbing titles 
AFP/Getty Images

Climbing will make an Olympic bow in three disciplines: bouldering, lead climbing and speed climbing.

In speed climbing, two climbers go head to head in a race to the top of a 15metre wall, up a fixed route. In lead climbing, they aim to reach as high as they can up that wall in an allotted time. In bouldering, competitors tackle set routes on a climbing wall.

The scores are collated from all three disciplines and a first male and female Olympic champion will be crowned. Britain’s Shauna Coxsey is a two-time World Cup winner.

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