Baseball and softball are fine. Surfing is OK I guess.
But Rock climbing? ROCK CLIMBING??
Sure, Rock Climbing
And some difficulty climbing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSjjpL1gI1Y
Whatever Telemark, that was so obviously a camera trick :).
Rock Climbing feels more like a sport than surfing to me. 
Is rock climbing just a race? Or is it judged somehow?
These are all activities, not sports.
Besides, the X games is a thing and has been for years. Isn’t that the Olympics of the eXtreme sports? Why double-dip?
These additions, along with golf, seem really pointless to me. They tried baseball and softball before and cut them. Golf has already shown a lot of the big names don’t want to go.
Keep in mind that these sports will only be in the Olympics in 2020; they are not permanently being added.
It didn’t hurt either the Olympics or the X-Games any when snowboarding and BMX biking became Olympic events. In fact, at first, a number of top snowboarders said they would not attend the Olympics because the snowboarding events were being run by the organization that handles skiing, but in the end, pretty much all of the top athletes showed up, mainly because nobody really cares who’s running the event when there’s a gold medal involved.
Baseball and softball were dropped mainly because the host countries complained that they couldn’t do anything with the stadiums afterwards. Tokyo will not have this problem.
Baseball isn’t a sport?
I can see why baseball would be a rather popular addition in Japan, and really, if you’re going to have an international multi-sport super-event, baseball really should be in it.
Interestingly enough, NPB (the Japanese majors) have made noises about holding up their season - which is shorter than the Major League season anyway and has a bit more room for maneuver - to allow its player to play in the Olympics. Were this to happen, but MLB did NOT hold up its season, Japan would be conferred a preposterously huge advantage; all its best players, with just a few exceptions, would be available, but every other major baseball-playing nation’s best players would all be tied up in the Major Leagues.
Rockclimbing is a great addition, IMO. Not only does it require amazing strength and skill, but it’s interesting to watch even if you don’t personally know anything about the sport.
I believe baseball and softball were cut since so few countries were putting out quality teams. Who has quality baseball teams? USA, Canada, Japan, Cuba, Taiwan, S. Korea. Australia won a silver, but I think that was a freak thing more than anything else.
Canada never medaled, so I’m not sure they even had a great team.
America’s gold in 2000 was one of the best Olympic moments, though. Shame so few people were paying attention with it in Australia that year. It was an amazing win. Tommy Lasorda called it the high point of his career, I think.
Several other Latin American countries (Venezuela, the DR, etc.) can easily compete with those, if they have their best players. Maybe the Dutch, too. They are unlikely to have many of those players in 2020, if they are on MLB active rosters.
Organizational players assigned to lower levels could participate, and as you saw, that can yield some fine, fun teams.
The KBO and the CPBL will also suspend their seasons around the Olympics. Japan would still be the team to beat, but they won’t roll over everybody.
The Dominican Republic and Venezuela are also medal contenders. Canada certainly could win a medal, it’d be an upset but not an outrageous one. I think Puerto Rico fields a team apart from the USA.
I count eight teams that could win gold; USA, Japan, PR, DR, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, and arguably South Korea. Australia, Taiwan, Mexico and Netherlands are long shots but would not be embarrassed. But that is quite a deep field by Olympic standards; in most team sports there are really not a great many countries that are genuine threats for gold. Baseball is quite reasonable in competitive balance.
There’s been discussion about including ballroom dancing, and pole dancing too, as Olympic events.
:eek:
Give them objective judging criteria, and why not? Rhythmic gymnastics and skating are pretty beloved, so there’s probably an audience for it.
As for the five new ones, I’ll list them since OP forgot.
[ul]
[li]Baseball and softball[/li][li]karate[/li][li]skateboarding[/li][li]sport climbing [/li][li]surfing[/li][/ul]
Sound good to me. I might pick up a few that I’d actually watch, since skateboarding and surfing would probably have creativity in them. I tend to watch judged sports, like gymnastics. I’d probably also watch Karate just to see a more structured fighting game. Sport climbing gets the Ninja Warrior in me going. Probably won’t look at Baseball/softball, since you can watch them any time. For me, the Olympics are about sports you don’t tend to see.
The Olympic motto is ‘Citius - Altius - Fortius’ (‘Faster - Higher - Stronger’.)
So for me, rock climbing qualifies, because you have an identical course and the fastest climber wins the gold medal.
However diving, synchronised swimming and gymnastics are all judged on artistic merit (i.e. subjectively), which means they are not part of the motto and are subject to bias.
Yeah, I’ve never been a fan of judged competitive events, since it makes corruption almost inevitable. Figure skating, say, can be fun to watch, but that doesn’t make it a competition. Climbing, though, sure, why not?
If I was in charge I’d remove any round-robin type of team sports, and anything that requires judges. Both of those are too arbitrary and ambiguous to prove who is “best”.
Didn’t mean to lump base and softball in the “they aren’t sports” like the rest of them, that was just me being lazy.
I don’t think the Olympics need to add any more sports in general. They have plenty. At this rate they’re going to include flag football, quidditch, video games and interpretive dance…
In fact, climbing pretty directly combines all three aspirations.