Never got to my point. Ran off to a meeting.

We a North American team still be considered the world champs if they don’t win this?

What about flag nrl?

Boxing and weight lifting removed? That would certainly be crazy. Particularly if it is to give room to sports such as lacrosse, or flag football, whatever that is.

Agreed, how could weight lifting ever be taken out? It is a classic of olympics in the same vein as athletics!
Boxing well the prestige is low anyway so i could see why.
But adding flag football and lacross WTF?

Boxing and Weight Lifting are part of the ancient sports that formed the original Olympic events aren't they? Sounds bonkers to take away those events.

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

Insanity to remove boxing and weightlifting. Modern Pentathlon was a goner after the fiasco last time.

All the new sports are ball sports, seems a bit much. Does anyone outside of the US play flag-football?? I think that is a crazy addition.

The reason for removing boxing is that it is completely corrupted. Weight lifting seems to be due to large amounts of doping and lack of governance in the federation. I think it is fair - but would have been better to threaten with it and then demand a revamp to be able to get back.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/dec/09/olympics-weightlifting-boxing-risk-being-dropped-2028-games

Andy - your assertion that the IOC "has provisionally removed boxing, modern pentathlon, and weightlifting from the program of [LA Olympics] 28" seems to be fake news. Modern pentathlon and weightlifting, which were not part of the initial sports programme for LA28, have now been confirmed as included by the plenary session of the IOC in Mumbai. Perhaps you could share a link. I've shared one below.

IOC has confirmed the inclusion of modern pentathlon, and weightlifting, but boxing's inclusion is in abeyance: currently there is no (IOC) recognised world body for boxing.
Modern pentathlon has adopted 'obstacle course' in place of horse riding. The latter was dropped - the catalyst was the disgraceful behaviour of the German support team in Tokyo 2020 Olympics assaulting a horse which the athlete top on points after two swimming and fencing, but known to be a relatively weak horsewoman, failed to ride round the course: blaming this on the poor horse.
Obstacle: https://www.uipmworld.org/obstacle

https://olympics.com/...ve-additional-sports
"Modern pentathlon and weightlifting
"The IOC Session also supported the recommendations made by the IOC EB concerning the status of modern pentathlon and weightlifting, which were not part of the initial sports programme for LA28.

• Modern pentathlon: The IOC Session endorsed the recommendation from the IOC EB to include modern pentathlon on the LA28 sports programme, acknowledging the replacement of horse riding with obstacle racing and the optimisation work conducted by the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) to reduce costs and complexity. As noted by the IOC EB, it is essential for the UIPM to continue to implement the necessary changes in governance and modernise as an organisation. Without the replacement of horse riding with obstacle racing, the sport would not have been included in the programme.
• Weightlifting: The IOC Session accepted the IOC EB’s recommendation to include weightlifting on the LA28 sports programme following the decision of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) to delegate its anti-doping management to the International Testing Agency (ITA), and its sanctioning to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) at least until the end of 2028. The effectiveness of the anti-doping programmes for the Paris 2024 Olympic qualification and Olympic competition will continue to be closely monitored by the IOC, as will the implementation of the governance and cultural changes adopted by the IWF.

"Following the IOC Session decision to withdraw recognition of the International Boxing Association (IBA), the IOC has not recognised another governing body for Olympic boxing. Therefore, the IOC EB decided that any decision regarding the inclusion of boxing on the LA28 sports programme is put on hold, so there was no discussion of this by the IOC Session."

weight lifting has the bigggest drug issue in the games and has been warend many times to clean up.
and boxing has a serious governing body issue

I’m glad Modern Pentathlon will stay. The horse debacle was awful but the cross country/laser shooting event is fun. Intrigued by the possibilities of an obstacle race!

WT has pushed for 3 events for tri in addition to the current standard distance + MTR.

-sprint distance
-eliminator style race
-short track Xterra (MTB)

My guess will be by ‘32 a new format will be part of tri. Most likely some type. Sprint or eliminator format + MTR. Which I would think would “replace” the standard distance I don’t think IOC will add more events without subtracting something.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I'd love to see some more Triathlon events, it's not adding a new sport, just new events. I'd actually like to se a middle distance event rather than a sprint, so the likes of LCB could go to the Olympics. Xterra would also be cool.

Why do baseball/cricket need to be in the Olympics? They are trillion-dollar sports already. Half of the athletes will skip the Olympics anyway because they're not getting team salary and they don't want to risk injury/illness.

Are the Olympics hoping to capitalize on this? I don't know cricket, but most baseball fans aren't fans of USA Baseball specifically, they are fans of their own local team. How many extra eyes will Mike Trout bring to the NBC Olympic broadcast?

I'm not saying the Olympics need to be exclusive to less mainstream sports, but there's already 2,500 MLB games every year just in the US. Maybe if we're looking to shake things up take a look at the medal distribution within the existing sports. There's 34 medals given out for swimming, 2 for triathlon.

The only events being pushed at both Paris and LA were sprint distance style. The standard is basically the longest tri event you’ll ever see in the Olympics for triathlon.

So my guess is that by 32 standard won’t be there and will be replaced by sprint + I think short track xterra is coming on very strong.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Modern Pentathlon and Triathlon (SBR) are multi-sports which have a commonality, as with biathlon in the winter.
The run round the arena (cross country is a stretch) with laser pistol shooting (4 bouts) is a great balance of skills, very similar to biathlon though 1500m endurance rather than that required for the skiskyting 10+km.
See the link I shared for clips of the types of obstacles. Transparently chosen for TV attractiveness - perhaps Olympic triathlon should morph to include cross: far more entertaining than riding round in a peloton (see also Paris).

The trick will be to ensure that it doesn't lopside the physical towards running. One attraction of horse riding (and believe me if you get a recalcitrant horse getting round without too many penalties (refusals plus time) is a hard ask) is that it was one of 3 skills and balanced out the advantage of the physically stronger run/swimmers.
Obstacle courses are commonplace in basic military training and I guess this synches with the ethos underpinning modern pentathlon's ancient 'warrior' basis.
"UIPM said the obstacle course discipline was being included as it appealed to "all age groups including youth" and was "dynamic and attractive to global audiences"."
It will replace the equestrian element in the Olympic modern pentathlon line-up from the 2028 Los Angeles Games if approved at November's UIPM Congress.
. . . involve two to four athletes racing each other over a course up to 100m long with as many as 10 obstacles which could include:

• Ascending steps
• Rope swing
• 1.5m wall
• Monkey bars
• Offset steps
• 0.5m low crawl
• Rings rig
• Under-over-under-over
• Wheels rig
• Balance beam
• Angled ladders
• "Tsunami" curved wall (to finish)
  

As an aside this will be devastating to GBR's talent pathway (multiple Olympic gold medals this century) which has benefited from the Pony Club encouraging adolescent males to stay riding with run/swim/shoot added on: the 'Pony Club Tetrathlon'.

I’ve always thought sports that have their marquee event that is clearly bigger than the Olympics don’t add.

Why soccer is in the Olympics and why requires B level athletes to go. That’s seemingly a waste.

I have no clue when world championship happen in table tennis but that’s the perfect Olympic sport. Or fencing etc

Like baseball likely may not even let top players go, they haven’t in the pass. Stuff like that is a waste.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Flag Football???? WTF????

Look to the World Games event schedule to get a potential preview of sports that may get added. That’s one pathway for a sport to “showcase” at an international event and then slide into the actual Olympics.

I don’t know if flag football was announced as co-ed but it likely could do that, which seems to be a key element these days. 10 different country federations made up flag football at last years world games. (Separate male/female events there)

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

You answered your own question. And also the same for flag (American) football.

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no sponsors | no races | nothing to see here

I am amazed that there are sufficient countries which play 'flag football': I thought that was a key criterion (>60) for even consideration. I guess that enough nations have 'American Football' federations and this is a version of that sport which reduces the incidence of life affecting brain injuries to ALARP.
Is does seem to be a sport that favours large (tall) people. With basketball and netball already there, [shadeofpink] there needs to be a search for sports which favour short athletes, to balance things out.[/shadeofpink]

74 countries make up the FF world federation currently.

I would actually think flag football is more shifty smaller players than "tall" (who generally are not very agile/quick on their feet).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Unlike cycling, right?

Baseball/Softball, Cricket, Lacrosse, and Squash I can see. I may not fully agree, but I can see a case for all of them. Flag Football? Come on, man. What's next? Dodge Ball? Cow Chip Tossing? Pumpkin Seed Spitting? Beer Pong?

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

To me, even if a sport like baseball has a larger premier event, it can add to the olympics if it brings in countries that otherwise would have little presence at the games.

Obviously it's only broadly played in parts of east Asia and the Americas, but there are a lot of countries (DR, Panama, Venezuela) that can be real contenders in that sport and get some shine, but not be meaningfully competitive in anything else.

Like Fiji in rugby 7s.

I really don't ever care when the IOC wants to try out sports. I get frustrated when they consider taking ancient/traditional ones away (though I understand the issues with weightlifting and boxing, I would be upset if they went away).

There are two billion people worldwide watching Cricket RIGHT NOW (there is a Cricket World Cup going on). The IPL has a market value in Dec 2022 of >$10B. The single most valuable franchise in the league has a higher market value than 6 MLB teams 27 NHL teams and all MLS teams. The value per match in league play is $13M based on levelized TV rights sold (on a per match basis).

The revenue draw of bringing T20 format cricket into the Olympics cannot be ignored.

There is an entire swath of humanity that we don't see here, that is crazy abou the sport. IOC needs those eyeballs to care. On top of that India generally fares poorly in the Olympics and the IOC needs 1.4billion people from there to care. So $$$ talks and overall 2B extra eyeballs who care about the Olympic Cricket Tournament is worth more than pretty any single sport the IOC can bring in. There is no sport the IOC can add that will bring that many fans in.

Now back to following the world cup. New Zealand plays Afghanistan in 4.5 hrs. Those kids from a war torn nation with barely a functioning facility just beat the reigning champs (England) on Sunday.

You bet the IOC wants cricket in. The olympic cricket tournament will massively pad IOC bank accounts.