I’m watching breaking and it is certainly an athletic performance. I did not catch any overview of the rules and evaluation system.
Two dancers come out and “dance off”. I don’t know for sure how it all goes.
This is a one-off, right? Not a permanent addition.
One for two is fairly typical for USA Track and Field.
The women had trouble in the Rio qualification heat.
The men have had a lot of trouble recently - as likely to DQ as to medal. The Washington Post did an article on it after the miss in Tokyo. (Sorry, link is not free)
For now. It’s an “Exhibition” or “Demonstration” event, used to gauge interest and participation. They still award medals, but those medals do not count toward a country’s “official” count. Sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding are the other demonstration events at this Olympics.
ETA: Correction, demonstration event medals didn’t count prior to the 2020 Games. Now they are awarded the same medals as the “official” sports and do count towards the medal count.
Yeah, I remember bowling and various other exhibition sports.
Is Baseball fully back in 2028 or just for that American-hosted Olympics? I am in the minority who think it isn’t big enough a sport to have. If MLB would stop to play, I’d support it more.
No American teams in the Beach Volleyball medals for both genders.
Is this the worst finish for USA in Beach Volleyball since it was added?
Baseball and softball are back for 2028. It makes sense for those when the US or Japan host.
Squash and flag football will be new events. And cricket is coming back after a long hiatus.
There may be 1 or 2 other new events but my creaky memory isn’t working right.
Breaking will not return in 2028 and TBD on Boxing given the headache the IBA has been.
The IOC is very obviously trying to appeal to a younger crowd with many of the new events. We’ll see how well it works. There’s a lot more competition for attention these days.
Boxing seems essential. I wouldn’t remove that at all.
Yes, according to Wiki.
The worst prior finish was 2016, when the women got bronze and the men failed to medal.
Tell that to the IBA. The IOC would prefer having an internationally recognized body deal with the qualifications and such but they’re such a train wreck.
I suspect they’ll make it work somehow, but I’m not surprised they’re leaving things in the air for a bit.
I’m hopeful. It’s been permanent since 1920.
Even without the latest crap from the IBA, I don’t think Olympic boxing has ever not been a shitshow.
Anyone know why they did away with the more transparent form of scoring where we, the TV viewers (and presumably the crowd) could see the scores during the boxing matches?
Completely unrelated question… anyone know what that green line is on the side of the long jump/triple jump pit? Doesn’t appear to mark any specific distance as far as I can tell and has been in the same place on that board on the side of the pit for the whole athletics meeting.
Last Olympics I think. I’m glad to see the helmets gone and I don’t mind traditional scoring.
I was wondering why they’d ditched it though. Seemed way less open to, well, you know… shenanigans.
I’ve seen a few different lines, and as far as I remember, they all show yellow through the pit and green on the side (I guess because green shows better against the white board?). Lines I’ve seen have been the WR distance, Olympic record, current leader, and longest jump for the current competitor.
I think the judges had to hit a little button to score the points and not all were very good at it.
I like the way it is now, especially not requiring helmets.
There’s a kind of stupid reason the men don’t wear headgear but the women do, and it has something to do with a study that demonstrated that headgear didn’t significantly reduce the incidence of concussions, and in some cases actually increased the incidence of concussions, however they only studied men, thus the women fighters still wear headgear due to a lack of data. 
In (indoor) volleyball, the US women do what the US men couldn’t, which is be up 2-1 in a semifinal, lose set 4, but then win set 5 to advance to the gold medal match… and they did that against #1 ranked Brazil, no less.
(In the bronze medal match on the men’s side, US win the bronze medal 3-0 over Italy)
I’m always a bit amused by the teams that are good at international indoor volleyball. As you might expect for sports in general, you start with a bunch of teams from Europe, plus USA, plus Brazil/Argentina. But Australia (who tends to be good at everything, and you’d think would be a good cultural fit) rarely shows up. And China and Japan are good. But also, Eastern European teams tend to be much better than you think, including Turkey, oddly.
(Apparently, from listening to commentary and so forth, there are big professional leagues in a lot of countries like Italy… which seems downright weird in the USA. Odd that we’re good at all in a sport which is basically not played at all past college here.)
5th consecutive failure of the US men’s 4X100 to medal. Have they all been because of baton changes? It’s a bizarre sequence considering that the US has dominated this relay for most of the 20th century and continues to produce top individual sprinters. Anyway 4X100 has to be one of the most enjoyable events of each Olympics: the raw speed, the drama of the baton changes and the possibility of underdog teams like Japan getting a medal.