Paragliding : An Olympic Sport ?

Following the invitation from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Organising Committee to 35 International Federations, the FAI has selected Paragliding as a potential additional sport. FAI, the FAI Hang Gliding and Paragliding Commission (CIVL), the Japan Aeronautic Association and the Japan Hang and Paragliding Federation have worked on a proposal which features Paragliding Accuracy and Paragliding Cross Country.

Started on 8 May, the process gave the opportunity to the International Federations to submit applications for their inclusion in the Games. The Tokyo 2020 unveiled today the list of the 26 sports that applied. They are: air sports; American football; baseball/softball; billiards/cue sports; bowls; bowling; bridge; chess; dancesport; floorball; flying disc; karate; korfball; netball; orienteering; polo; racquetball; roller sports; sport climbing; squash; sumo; surfing; tug-of-war; under water sports; water ski/wakeboard; and wushu.

A short list will be released on 22 June. In the following phase, the pre-selected sports will provide more information and details to Tokyo 2020. They will also make presentations in Tokyo to the "Additional Event Programme Panel" that will give recommendations to Tokyo 2020, which will in turn select the events to be presented to the IOC by 30 September.

The final decision will be made by the IOC Session in Rio in August 2016. It will be based on a list of 35 evaluation criteria including potential costs (venues, broadcast, technology), host country popularity (participants, events, results, viewership) and percentage of National Federations that organise National Championships. The full list of criteria is available on the IOC website.

(Photo credit: Martin Scheel - Azoom.ch)