The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday approved five new sports – baseball and softball, cricket, squash, lacrosse and flag football – proposed by the Los Angeles (LA) 2028 Olympic Games Organising Committee at its second Executive Board meeting in Mumbai, India.
The final decision on the Olympic programme for Los Angeles 2028 will be made at the IOC Session in Mumbai on 15-17 July.
However, with the Executive Board, the IOC’s de facto highest decision-making body, having approved five more sports for inclusion in the LA Games, the Session will focus on endorsing them.
The IOC only recognised the five new sports for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“The choice of five new sports is linked to American sporting culture,” said IOC President Thomas Bach, “and will showcase iconic American sports to the world.”
Baseball and softball will return to the Olympic programme in 2021 after a seven-year absence following the Tokyo 2020 Games. Cricket, which has more than 2.5 billion fans, will return to the Olympics after a 128-year absence since the 1900 Paris Games.
Lacrosse will make its third Olympic appearance since 1904 in St Louis and 1908 in London, while flag football and squash will make their debuts.
In February last year, the IOC designated 28 LA Games foundational sports, including athletics and swimming, and added five new sports to the programme.
The IOC Executive Board also proposed the inclusion of the traditional sports of modern pentathlon and weightlifting, which were excluded from the 28 Olympic sports for LA.
The move comes as the International Modern Pentathlon Federation has replaced equestrianism with show jumping and the International Weightlifting Federation has delegated anti-doping control to the International Testing Agency (ITA).
However, the IOC, which revoked the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) status as a sport-specific international federation after it failed to meet standards in a number of areas, including financial transparency, did not discuss adopting boxing as an official sport this time around, saying there was no body to represent world boxing after the IBA’s expulsion. 슬롯