It was announced yesterday that at the 2028 Olympics, the three sports noted in the thread title are out. Replacing them are surfing, climbing, and skateboarding.
Or so it appears for now.
I know why pentathlon is out, and maybe boxing, but I’m floored weightlifting may not be there. It’s one of the most fundamental sports I can think of.
I am an enthusiastic weightlifter, but the governing body of the sport has long been on thin ice for its alleged role in turning a blind eye to steroid use, corruption and improper testing. Although I have no idea how accurate these allegations are, they are persistent and steroids are perceived to be a problem at many levels of competition.
It is a fundamental sport and I would prefer to see it included. I hope it will be part of future games.
My guess is they appeal more to young people, more so than many traditional sports. (BTW, if you’re arguing for weightlifting as a “fundamental” sport, couldn’t you make the same argument for boxing?)
The way I read the article, the exclusion of all three sports was designed to send a message to their relevant governing bodies to get their act together but that they can easily be added back to the schedule if they do. I hope they do, I would hate to see athletes who’ve spent years training being denied the opportunity to compete.
I thought it was odd that pentathlon is being excluded until they find a replacement for horse riding, yet equestrian sports are in no danger of being removed from the Olympics. What’s the difference?
I can understand modern pentathlon, it’s an expensive sport and most people only know of it in trivia contests.
Even if there are corruption problems, boxing and weightlifting are inexpensive sports to host. I’m not sure what the Olympic requirements are, but there’s plenty of college athletic facilities in the greater LA area that could easily host those sports.
Edit: I remember the Olympics doing something crazy and saying that wrestling would be eliminated before the Rio games. Obviously, wrestling is still an Olympic sport
I didn’t argue for it but I can see the rationale, however, both have their problems for sure.
Personally I am a fan of objective winner/loser sports rather than having an aesthetic judgement made and I’m not against changes being made that are in line with bringing in a new audience.
Climbing is a good choice. How high can you go? how quick can you get there? That seems sensible to me.
There was a lot of really bad press this last olympics from pentathletes (one specifically) not treating the horses well. A lot of this came from the equestrians themselves. According to them, the pentathletes are crappy riders and take jumps in a way that is dangerous for the horses and riders. Part is possibly that in pentathlon, the athletes don’t compete with their own horse - the idea is that they should be able to ride with any horse who comes along. Which is a cool idea. But if you have a bad rider, who is under pressure to perform well, who doesn’t care at all about the horse - you have a recipe for injured horses.
You know… it would be ok to phase out some sports without bringing in ridiculous shit like surfing and skateboarding… although, just think of the boxers who got their start at the Olympics. Ali comes to mind…
Modern Pentathlon was on the chopping block a few years ago before it was saved when the wrestling scandal caused that sport to be put on the “out in 2020” list, only for the sport to get its act together and beat baseball/softball and squash in the vote to see what would replace it. Somewhere along the line, it has become too much of an anachronism; IMHO, combining running and shooting (and using “electronic” shooting at that) was enough of a mistake, but getting rid of equestrian just defeats the purpose of the whole thing.
I wonder what they will replace equestrian with; I would think cycling is closest, but that has already been dismissed.
As for the other sports, snatch and clean-and-jerk weightlifting are old-fashioned, although I am a little surprised nobody suggested powerlifting as a replacement (How Much Ya Bench?), and now that boxing is using pretty much the same rules as professional boxing, is it really necessary? I have a feeling that the IOC might treat boxing friendlier if it goes back to one of the previous scoring systems, to differentiate it more from the professional version.
No, no, not MMA. Pankraton. Which is, y’know, the exact same thing, except it has classical history behind it.
Seriously, the reason to phase out boxing has nothing to do with the formalism of it, but because it has such a high potential for serious and lifelong injury. Which is also no doubt true for any of the less limited forms of fighting sport. If we as a society deem that those injuries are acceptable, then yeah, we might as well just make a “fundamental” fighting sport like pankraton the Olympic event, but I can also see society deciding otherwise.
And I agree with others that climbing is a perfectly good Olympic sport, but skateboarding and surfing seem like poor fits.
I guess Bulgaria doesn’t need to field a team anymore with weightlifting out.
I hate these judged events like snowboarding and surfing and skateboarding. Seems like the old fogies that run the Olympics are trying too hard to appeal to the younger viewers. I’m on the fence with boxing. I like a good boxing match, but three round matches where it’s a matter of tallying hits is pretty far removed from traditional boxing.
Another problem with Olympics boxing, IMHO, is its relative importance. The Olympics are supposed to be the pinnacle of sports - the people who compete there should to be the best in the world doing the best they’ve ever done. And yet Olympic boxing, because of its amateur nature, is basically a sideshow compared to the “sport” as a whole. It’s entry-level boxing. Does anyone think that gold medalists are the best boxers in the world?
Is it the Olympics that are trying to appeal to the younger viewers, or the broadcasters - especially NBC, which threw billions of dollars at the IOC only to see disappointing ratings (and the promises of selling advertising time to its popular shows at discounted rates to make up for them as a result)?
Boxing switched to a traditional 10-point-must system in 2016. There is no more “punch counting.”
I agree about judged events; my main problem with them is, nobody watching knows what the judges consider “good.” What made that trick a 9 instead of an 8? Expect more of the same with breakdancing in 2024.
As for climbing, my only problem with it is the scoring system - any system that depends solely on where you placed in an event has problems, especially when determining whether A or B wins depends on how well C does after A and B have already finished. Figure skating figured this out when it changed its scoring system.