Olympic cull savages Australia’s medal hopes

Some of Australia’s top medal event prospects have been culled from the program for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Jared Tallent has won four medals, including one gold, at the past three Olympic Games Picture: Getty Images

Some of Australia’s top medal event prospects have been culled from the program for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to make way for hip-culture sports such as break dancing.

Baseball and softball is out, so too the 50km walk, and the 470 sailing for separate men’s and women’s classes. It’s a strict cull to limit competitors to 10,500, achieve a 50-50 gender split and to cater for France’s preferences.

Australia has had strong success in the 50km walk with Jared Tallent, a four-time Olympic medallist, three-time World Championship medallist and current Olympic record holder. Australia has also won five gold medals in 470s sailing since the Sydney Olympics. World Athletics, which was disappointed not to have been awarded some cross country running events for the Games, said it would replace the mens walk with a mixed gender walking event yet to be determined.

But the big loser was the drug-addled sport of weightlifting, which will have quota places reduced to just 120 athletes, less than half of the 260 at Rio 2016, amid a warning from the IOC that even those spots are not guaranteed pending a cleanout of the sport.

The world swimming body, FINA, was also unsuccessful in its bid to add 50m butterfly, breaststroke and backstroke onto the swimming program which would have helped Australia’s medal chances in its number one Olympic sport.

Australia’s sailors have dominated the 470 class at the Olympicsthis century

But the Paris organisers and the IOC announced that four “urban’’ sports on the 2024 program, including, breaking (the sport version of breakdancing), making its debut after one major competition at a youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires two years ago. The others are surfing, sport climbing and skateboarding, all of which will debut at the Tokyo Olympics in July.

IOC president Thomas Bach said: “With this program, we are making the Olympic Games Paris 2024 fit for the post-corona world.

“We are further reducing the cost and complexity of hosting the Games.”

Matt Carroll, the Australian Olympic Committee chief executive, was court side at the youth Olympics to watch the B-boys and B-girls and told The Australian: “Breaking is very athletic and strength is very very important. The format is like a dance off, and it’s very exciting’’.

While the Olympic format and scoring for the sport is yet to be finalised, other breaking competitions have scored points for dance moves, power moves such as spins and freezes of artistic poses.

“It can resonate with a lot of people because hip-hop culture resonates with a lot of people, hip-hop music resonates with a lot of people,” Logan Edra, a 17-year-old American dancer who goes by the performance name Logistx told Reuters.

The IOC said eight events have been added replacing existing events. These are: a new mixed-gender event in athletics to replace the men’s 50km race walk; a new women’s weight class in boxing to replace a men’s weight class; two extreme canoe slalom events to replace two canoe sprint events; three mixed events in sailing (including mixed kiteboarding and mixed 470 – two-person dinghy), to replace the individual 470s and the men’s Finn class and one skeet mixed team event in shooting to replace the trap mixed team event.