Surfs Up At The 2020 Summer Olympics
Happy new year from everyone at Mailsports. 2020 is going to be a huge year for swimming, because the long awaited 2020 Summer Olympics will begin on Friday the 24th of July in Japan, ending on Sunday the 9th of August.
After the traditional lighting of the beacon and extravagant opening ceremony, it will feature 5 new sports: baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing alongside the traditional favourites. Japan previously hosted the summer Olympic Games, also in Tokyo, 56 years before (in 1964). Japanese officials, full of national pride, are calling their upcoming games “the most innovative ever organised and will rest on three fundamental principles to transform the world: striving for your personal best (achieving your personal best); accepting one another (unity in diversity); and passing on a legacy for the future (connecting to tomorrow)”. These are truly universal principles we can all agree with, which is important because the Olympic Games have become a time honoured tradition of international peace, possibly the most iconic representation of the relative global peace that has existed since the end of the second world war.
Aquatic Sports At The 2020 Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games tend to overshadow all other swimming events of the year, and the aquatics category of sports has the most events of all the sports, ranging from a multitude of classic races to water polo.
Swimming is the host nations 4th strongest sport, with 22 gold medals, which is more than Team GB’s 16 gold medals. That is despite Japan joining the Olympic Games in 1912, 16 years after the first modern Olympic games. Japan’s fastest swimmers have caught up and overtaken the Great British athletes, but Team GB can still bring it back.
Diving will be interesting to watch at the 2020 Games, because Team GB came second at the 2016 games while China dominated the sport, winning almost half the total medals. Whether the last four years has changed the competitive landscape, or if China will take the remaining medals and reign supreme, only time will tell.
Water polo, artistic swimming and marathon swimming are less popular than the more well-known aquatic sports but have experienced growing interest in recent years. These water sports demonstrate the flexibility of aquatic sports, which is what the 2020 Summer Games may become historical for, as surfing becomes an official Olympic sport.
Surfing At The 2020 Olympic Games Will Make Waves
Japan introduced Judo as an Olympic sport in 1968, the last time the nation hosted a Summer Olympic games. Since then it has become a widely popular spectator event at the Games. This year, Japan will be bringing 5 new sports into the fold: surfing, baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding and sport climbing. These additions will create a huge impact on the Games, increasing their scope in line with the inclusive nature of the Olympics. Here at Mailsports, we will be watching Olympic surfing with keen interest, and consider the sports rise to the international stage as inspirational to tomorrows swimmers.
Keep an eye out for the 2020 Olympic swimwear and equipment collections we will be featuring on the site, and if you are signed up to our newsletter we will let you know when it drops.
Let the games begin!
On July 24th.