(Bombay) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted on Monday the program for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, marked by the arrival of five new sports including cricket, the main innovation intended to attract new audiences.
As proposed Friday by the executive commission, whose opinions are systematically followed, the 141st session of the body meeting in Bombay, India, validated by an immense majority the inclusion of cricket, baseball/softball, squash, “flag football” and lacrosse, a team sport derived from Native American cultures.
In its shortened form known as “T-20”, cricket therefore returns to the Olympic Games more than a century after its brief appearance during the Parisian edition of 1900, during a match won by the English against the French.
“Cricket has more than 2.5 billion fans around the world and represents an extraordinary opportunity to engage new countries and communities, including the host country of this session: India,” praised Austria’s Karl Stoss, President of the Olympic Program Commission.
Popular throughout the Commonwealth, this batting sport can already hope to be repeated at the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, before perhaps definitively integrating the Olympic program.
Especially since India, the largest country to have ever hosted the Olympic Games, took advantage of the opening ceremony of the session to present its candidacy for the 2036 edition on Saturday.
The new arrivals bring the number of sports on the Los Angeles program to 35 or even 36, a historic record, since the IOC has at the same time confirmed the maintenance of two disciplines in the spotlight – modern pentathlon and weightlifting –, all by further postponing his decision on boxing.
“We want boxing on the program. We have no problem with boxing or the boxers, just a huge problem with its governing body,” Thomas Bach clarified on Friday, leaving little doubt about the long-term maintenance of the discipline.
The IOC has in fact definitively withdrawn its recognition from the international federation (IBA) after a cascade of scandals, and is waiting to see if World Boxing, a young organization initiated by the American federation, manages to bring together enough countries to replace it.