The IOC on Monday announced the inclusion of men’s and women’s ski slopestyle, snowboard slopestyle and snowboard parallel special slalom for the ‘14 Sochi Olympics. The additions come after the IOC Exec Board in April added men’s and women’s ski halfpipe, women’s ski jumping, biathlon mixed relay, figure skating team event and luge team relay. In addition, the exec board also agreed on a shortlist of sports that will be considered for inclusion in the ’20 Games: baseball, karate, roller sports, softball, sports climbing, squash, wakeboard and wushu. The vote will take place at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires in ’13 (IOC). In Boston, John Powers notes before IOC officials added the sports to the '14 Games this week, they "wanted to make sure that Sochi could accommodate the extra athletes and events." After checking the venues in Russia during the spring, Int'l Ski Federation and IOC experts "concluded that the races could be integrated with the other cross tracks and have a common finish line" (BOSTON GLOBE, 7/6). In Vancouver, Gary Kingston wrote the IOC’s “continued courtship of the X Games generation took another tail-grab, rodeo-spin forward Monday.” The “so-called extreme sports” are poised to become “just as prominent as the traditional downhill and cross-country skiers at the Winter Olympics.” Slopestyle skier T. J. Schiller said, "I was pretty skeptical just because of how long it took to get halfpipe in, so this blew my mind." Slopestyle is a judged sport in which athletes “perform acrobatic tricks while making their way down a mountain course featuring a variety of different sized jumps, straight or rainbow-shaped rails and boxes or platforms.” Kingston noted a team alpine event “was denied on Monday" (VANCOUVER SUN, 7/5).
SWINGING FOR '20 INCLUSION: BASEBALLAMERICA.com’s John Manuel noted the Int'l Baseball Federation has been “working toward baseball's Olympic reinstatement” and has launched a new logo “to herald the effort.” IBAF President Riccardo Fraccari “successfully lobbied” the IOC for consideration to rejoin the Olympics in '20. Baseball's plan is to “have one bat-and-ball sport with two disciplines: men's baseball and women's softball.” Manuel noted the two sports likely "would share one field” (BASEBALLAMERICA.com. 7/5). In London, Steve James noted there is “strong support building” for the inclusion of cricket in the ’20 Games, “buoyed by the IOC’s full recognition of the International Cricket Council game” in ‘07. The ICC at its annual meeting in Hong Kong last week adopted an “investigation into the viability of cricket at the Olympics” as part of its “strategic plan for 2011 to 2015” (London TELEGRAPH, 7/5).
