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≡ LA28 IN SHARPER FOCUS ≡
The announcement of the 2028 Olympic event program and the athlete entry quotas for each revealed Wednesday by the International Olympic Committee inevitably has winners and losers among the 31 primary sports now part of the Games.
Here are five winning changes for six International Federations for 2028:
● Aquatics
Two long-sought additions to the aquatics program were made, with the addition of the men’s and women’s 50 m Backstrokes, Breaststrokes and Butterflys and the addition of four teams in women’s water polo, so that both the men’s and women’s tournaments have 12 teams.
World Aquatics has been lobbying for this seemingly forever and now has its wish, but at a price. The cost is that there was no increase in the number of athletes who can be entered in total, which remained at 1,370. Squads were limited to 12 players at Paris 2024, so the four new women’s polo teams chop 48 athletes out of swimming or diving or artistic swimming.
And how will swimming squads be arranged to allow for entries in the six added events? There are going to be great swimmers who won’t be in the pool in 2028 due to the limitations that will come from today’s additions.
● Archery
World Archery has long sought the addition of one or more Compound events, to go along with the traditional Recurve events. It got its wish with a Compound Mixed Team event, but – again – the overall quota of 128 archery remained the same. Some Recurve archers will have to stay home.
● Football
FIFA got two wins with the addition of four women’s team for a 16-team tournament and the reduction of four teams for men, down to 12. First, no change in its player quota was needed: still at 504. Moreover, the women’s expansion continues to promote that side of the sport, while further degrading the men’s tournament, which is fine with FIFA, making the U-23 teams (with up to three overage adds) even less of a threat to its ultra-lucrative men’s World Cup.
● Golf and Gymnastics
In an easy add to expand the programs of these popular sports, a mixed team event of some format was added to both sports. No addition in quota, so the competitors will come from the existing entry pool, but it’s more sessions to sell to spectators and to show on television.
● Sport Climbing
In this sport, separate events are held in Speed, Lead and Boulder. For Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, artificial combined events were held, but now each event will be contested on its own, as is normally seen. The quota was expanded from 68 to 76 athletes to make this happen, a great outcome for the sport.
The obvious losers:
● Athletics
Race walkers, already angry at the loss of the men’s 50 km Walk in Paris for a mixed relay, saw that event go away altogether! Now, two events will be held, a men’s and women’s Half Marathon, replacing the prior 20 km events. At least the athletics quota of 1,810 was not touched, so these events might get a few more entries.
● Modern Pentathlon
Although IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell (NZL) went to some lengths to praise the new direction of the sport – insisted on by the IOC – it still cut the quota from 72 to 64 and gave the spots to Sport Climbing. That’s not a good thing by any means.
● Weightlifting
This sport was in serious jeopardy of being left off the 2028 program completely due to its long history with doping. But it made it back in, but with only 120 entries, after having 196 at Tokyo 2020 and 260 at Rio 2016! All the pressure from the other 30 sports and the 10,500 athlete limit are going to make it hard for this sport to ever make it back to where it was before.
Adding in the 698 athletes in the five added sports requested by the LA28 organizers, and the total is projected to 11,198 athletes across a record 36 sports and 351 events, with 5,655 women (50.5%) and 5,543 men (49.5%), another Olympic first.
¶
One of the announcements that had been expected was the full venue plan for LA28, which was agreed – sort of – with the IOC Executive Board, with the organizing committee to make future announcements.
But at Wednesday’s news conference, IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, Christophe Dubi (SUI), provided significant insight into what can be expected:
“Today the Executive Board has validated the master plan in broad terms, and that’s a really practical and helpful step forward. As for the announcement, including each and every detail, let’s be clear, this will be the responsibility of L.A.
“What I can tell you, though, is that the key principles that were followed for the establishment of the master plan were to use and maximize the use of existing venues, no new permanent infrastructures, maximize also the opportunities within the City of L.A. and also re-group the venues to avoid stand-alones.
“Every time you have stand-alone, you’re complex-ifying the operations.
“So, all-in-all, these principles were followed and now the master plan has been adopted. For the details, let’s wait until L.A. will make the announcement.”
The key language here:
● “maximize also the opportunities within the City of L.A.”
● “re-group the venues to avoid stand-alones.”
Both are going to come into play quickly:
● From the “stand-alones” perspective, it makes perfect sense why continuing to pursue beach volleyball in Santa Monica was dropped. Not only was the City of Santa Monica recalcitrant, but this venue was all by itself.
So, following this logic, doesn’t it make better sense to group beach volleyball and surfing together in Huntington Beach, already a finalist for the surfers and a historic site for beach volleyball?
● The comment about maximizing venues inside the City of Los Angeles is a tantalizing possible reference to a move of sailing to San Pedro from Long Beach, being noisily insisted on by L.A. City Council member Tim McOsker. But that’s not sure at all, as there are other issues in play in that sport.
However, it could be a signal about how some other events are sorted out, such as the marathons, race walks and road cycling events. Baseball will certainly be at Dodger Stadium, but is there a venue for indoor volleyball in L.A.? The Honda Center in Anaheim was proposed in the LA28 bid, and the Kia Forum in Inglewood is available, but both outside the city limits. What about boxing, originally at the L.A. Convention Center, but now homeless? And Mountain Bike, possibly in Griffith Park?
And Cricket and Squash are not yet assigned; surely Squash can find a spot in Los Angeles.
When Dubi speaks, it’s worth listening, so watch for LA28 to try and squeeze some more sports inside the city limits, to help make L.A. as much of a winner as possible.
Rich Perelman
Editor
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