3 sports with questionable futures at the Olympics after 2020
Daniel Roberts
In Rio over the weekend, South Korean golfer Inbee Park dominated the first women’s Olympic golf competition since 1900. For her efforts, Park got a gold medal for her country, but no prize money whatsoever. On the men’s side, Great Britain’s Justin Rose bested Sweden’s Henrik Stenson by just two strokes to take the gold. It was an exciting finish—the two golfers entered the 72nd hole all tied up—but the competition was missing four of the top five golfers in the world, and many have questioned whether golf belongs at the Olympics.
Golf isn’t the only returning sport with a questionable future at the Olympics beyond 2020. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted in 2009 to bring back golf and seven-player rugby for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games, reaching its own maximum number of 28 sports, a maximum that the IOC has dropped for Olympics after 2016.
This month, the IOC voted to bring back baseball and softball (which the IOC considers one sport) for 2020, as well as add karate, skateboarding, climbing, and surfing, all new Olympic sports. Adding five sports represented “the most comprehensive evolution of the Olympic program in modern history,” the IOC said.
How does the IOC decide which sports to add or remove from the Olympics? Every sport that wants in must have an international federation that oversees it and must adhere to WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency). Then a sport can submit a bid, which can be costly and take years. Quartz called it “a Herculean task.”
Even though golf, rugby, baseball and softball have all been at the Olympics in the past, there’s no guarantee they will stick around past 2020.
Olympic golf, back for 2016 and 2020
The vote to bring back Olympic golf, after an absence of 112 years (on the men’s side, 116 years on the women’s), was by no means unanimous: 63 to 27, and two abstentions. And the return, already controversial because many doubt that golf should be an Olympic sport, got more mired in controversy when a rush of top golfers all opted out of the Olympics in a hurry, including the top four in the world: Jason Day (Australia), Dustin Johnson (USA), Jordan Spieth (USA) and Rory McIlroy (Ireland).
Many of the golfers who dropped out of Rio cited the Zika virus as their reason, but not all of them, and the consensus in the golf world was that many golfers simply weren’t interested. Rory McIlroy added credence to this by saying at a press conference that he wouldn’t even watch the event on television.
Indeed, many have questioned whether golf, tennis, and basketball belong in the Olympics, because they are sports in which an Olympic medal will never be more coveted to players than winning the top event in their own sport. That is: it’s unlikely any golfer or tennis player would care more about an Olympic medal than winning a Major; it’s unlikely any NBA star would care more about an Olympic medal than winning the NBA Finals. In contrast, sports like swimming, track & field, and gymnastics are a perfect fit for the Olympics because winning an Olympic medal is the pinnacle achievement in the sport.
But Olympic golf in Rio went off without a hitch, and on the men’s side, the final day concluded with a thrilling battle between Rose and Stenson that lasted all the way until the final 72nd hole. That made for good television (NBC-owned Golf Channel ran live coverage of the golf) and positive buzz on social media.
The golfers who did go to Rio were glad; Americans like Rickie Fowler and Bubba Watson went to many other Olympic events and spent time with fellow Team USA athletes like Michael Phelps and Allyson Felix. It all amounted to positive vibes about Olympic golf, and many are now predicting that far fewer top golfers will say no four years from now in Tokyo.
Bleacher Report wrote that in the end, the Olympic golf “didn’t disappoint.” Ron Sirak, a longtime senior writer at Golf Digest, reflected, “The intention was never to suggest that Olympic gold is more prized than a Masters green jacket… The point was not to devalue the majors, but rather to enhance to the game. Next year, the International Olympic Committee vote on whether to expand golf beyond the 2020 Games. I’m guessing they will.”
Olympic sevens rugby, back for 2016 and 2020
Rugby had last been played at the Olympics in 1924 in Paris, but the seven-player version (“sevens”) had never been at the Olympics. This year’s games were mostly shown on NBC Sports Network and on CNBC, a nice national stage for a sport that is often hard to find on television. (In 2011, NBC started showing the Sevens World Series and the Rugby World Cup on NBC Sports Network and its streaming product, NBC Sports Live Extra.)
Fiji won the rugby medal in Rio, followed by Great Britain and South Africa. (The US placed ninth.) Nate Ebner, a current NFL special teams player for the New England Patriots, earned a spot on the American team, which helped bring the attention of many NFL fans who might not have watched otherwise.
Like golf, many expect that rugby was enough of a success to stay after 2020, but 2020 will be the second-half of the test.
Olympic baseball and softball, returning in 2020
The IOC voted this month to bring back baseball and softball in 2020. While the rules are different, and the team size is different, the IOC counts them as one sport.
Olympic baseball debuted in 1904 (the same year as men’s Olympic golf) but was last played at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. (The baseball stadium from the 2004 Olympics in Athens is overgrown and deserted today, a sad sight.) After a hiatus of two Olympics, baseball will return in Tokyo in 2020. It’s a fitting venue: Tokyo has the benefit of many preexisting baseball fields, so that particular sport won’t require much new construction.
In 2008, the US baseball team had to settle for a bronze medal, losing to South Korea and Cuba. Very few of the 2008 Olympic roster are still playing in MLB, but Cubs ace Jake Arrieta and Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg were among them. When the IOC announced baseball and softball will return, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that both baseball and softball, “are global sports that belong in the Olympics. We are grateful to the IOC executive board, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee and the World Baseball Softball Confederation for their collective efforts.”
Softball debuted at the Olympics in 1996, for women only. It was last seen in 2008, before it took the same hiatus as baseball. When the IOC voted in 2005 to remove it after 2008, “We were taken back 100 years, to a time when women were discouraged from becoming athletes,” Jennie Finch, who pitched for Team USA in 2004 and in 2008, wrote in an op-ed for Vox.
Softball is back for 2020, and supporters are calling it a major win. Michele Smith, the pitcher, gold medalist, and now ESPN broadcaster, told The Atlantic that being back in the Olympics gives softball “credibility again.”
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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
