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New Events At The Olympic Games

A Guide To New Sports Being Added At Beijing 2008

Jul 1, 2008

Each Olympics the International Olympic Committee announces new races, disciplines and sports for the competition programme and this year is no exception.

Beijing 2008 begins on the 8th of August and concludes on the 24th August and there have been a number of additions to the programme. None are as controversial as the addition of women’s volley ball in Sydney 2000 but they make interesting reading nonetheless. The trend in this Olympics has been to the addition of more Women’s events and the addition of endurance races. The most notable addition though is the new inclusion of the potentially showstopping BMX event.

BMX At the Olympics

Although there have been a number of new events added to the Beijing 2008 Olympic programme the only new discipline is BMX biking. This new discipline will consist of just two events; the men and women’s individual. The BMX competition will be a traditional 8 man heat based BMX race over 1 lap. These laps last approximately 40 seconds and are incredibly intense and exciting because participants race only inches from one another at lightning speed.

New Women’s Events

At Beijing 2008 the number of women’s events will be increased from 125 to 127. This is part of the I.O.C’s initiative to increase women’s participation in the games as a whole. With the added events it should add approximately another 130 female athletes to the games. These added events will include the women’s 3000 metre Steeplechase and women’s team events in the foil and sabre fencing disciplines.

New Swimming Events

The new swimming event to be added at Beijing 2008 will be the gruelling Men and Women’s 10km Marathon Swim. The race takes approximately 2 hours and will be held at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park venue outside of Beijing. This huge water venue has approximately 6.35 million square metres of water surface area. Edith Van Dijk from the Netherlands is favourite to take the inaugural gold medal in this event.

Table Tennis at the Olympics

Perennial spectator’s favourite Table Tennis will be undergoing one small change in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Doubles has been done away with and will be replaced instead with a team event.

New Olympic Event Summary

To summarise the new events are

Men and Women’s Individual BMX
Men and Women’s 10k Marathon Swim
Women’s 3000m Steeplechase
Women’s team Sabre and Foil
Table Tennis Team event replaces doubles

At the Beijing Olympics there will be 302 (165 men’s, 127 women’s and 10 mixed) events in total consisting of 28 sports. More information on Beijing 2008 can be found on the Olympic Movement’s Official Website.

The copyright of the article New Events At The Olympic Games in Summer Olympic Games is owned by Peter Reeves. Permission to republish New Events At The Olympic Games in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.