When karate makes its Olympic Games debut on Thursday, it’ll not just be the competitors bent prove themselves on the world’s biggest sporting stage The ancient Japanese self-defense itself will get a long-awaited shot at persuading a worldwide audience that it belongs within the Olympics after being snubbed 3 times within the past – and by the Paris 2024 organisers also .
Karate was initially ruled out for Tokyo 2020, but its spot was secured because of a replacement “Olympic Agenda 2020” provision that permits the host nations to propose variety of sports.
The three-day karate programme will see some 80 competitors from 35 countries and territories – plus the Refugee Olympic Team – vying for eight gold medals at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo.
When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved karate for Tokyo in 2016, World Karate Federation officials believed they also had it within the bag for Paris, given the arguably bigger following the game has in France than in its native Japan.
“We got good vibes at the time,” a WKF official told Reuters, describing the talks held with the Paris 2024 organisers. The official declined to be identified because those talks weren’t public.
Ultimately, however, the Paris organisers dropped karate and added breakdancing while keeping the three other sports proposed for Tokyo 2020: surfing, climbing and skateboarding.
IOC President Thomas Bach hailed that call as making the Games “more urban, and offering the chance to attach with the younger generation” With the Olympics already crowded with four other combat sports – wrestling, boxing, judo and taekwondo – karate’s chances for l. a. and beyond don’t look good.
“I think the sense was, if it had been rejected for Paris, then what chance does it have anywhere else?” said Yuko Takahashi, a former national team karateka who recalled competing to packed arenas in France and therefore the superstar status that her French counterparts enjoyed there.
“It are going to be interesting to ascertain how audiences round the Weltanschauung karate as an Olympic sport,” said Takahashi, who chairs the Japan Traditional Karate Association.
Tokyo’s Olympic karatekas, for his or her part, have said they’re going to simply specialise in their game and hope that results in good results for his or her discipline.
“If we provides it our greatest , i feel we’ll be ready to contribute to karate’s reputation for the Olympics after subsequent one,” Ryo Kiyuna, a gold-medal favourite, told reporters this month.
Russia’s Karate Federation said on Wednesday that Anna Chernysheva, who competes within the under-55kg category and is that the only karateka representing the Russian Olympic Committee, tested positive for COVID-19 and wouldn’t be ready to participate .
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