Category Archive: Tokyo 2020

Surfing in 2020: Do Surfers Even Want to be in the Olympics?

What surfing in the Olympics could look like, for better or worse. Photo: WebberWavePools.com
What surfing in the Olympics could look like, for better or worse. Photo: WebberWavePools.com

Surfing in the Olympics? It’s been selected by the Tokyo Olympic powers that be. But why is it even being considered? Technology.

The challenges up till now for holding surfing competitions in the Olympics is how to ensure a level playing field for all surfers. After all, waves with the same or similar difficulty levels don’t come when you want them to in the big blue ocean. And what do you do if the venue for the summer games is land-locked?

Technology appears to be the wave that surfing enthusiasts in support of making it an Olympic sport are betting on. Now wavepools are becoming so sophisticated that specific heights and shapes of waves can be created and repeated consistently so that wave patterns can be replicated for competition.

According to Fernando Aquerre, President of the International Surfing Association, surfing wasn’t initially selected as an Olympic sport in 2011 because of the lack of proper wave-making technologies. “But now the proper wave technology or world-class or Olympic surfing competitions is available,” he wrote in this article.

Apparently it’s still open as to whether a competition in 2020 in Tokyo would be in a wave pool or in the ocean. But the debate is on as to which is more appropriate. Here are a few point/counterpoint from Surfermag:

Surfing should be an Olympic Sport for sure. It would be hard to have the event when the hosting city is land locked, but with the way technology is going it seems we will be able to bring world class waves and surfing anywhere. – Taylor Knox, Veteran World Tour Surfer

No, no and err…no. Olympic sports are all anchored around fairness and level playing fields, but the ocean doesn’t offer that. The only way surfing would ever be considered an Olympic sport is if it was held in wave pools, and if it was held in wave pools then I wouldn’t consider it surfing. The fact that no two waves are ever the same is what makes surfing, surfing. It’s not designed to be fair. The ocean isn’t fair, and unless you’re Kelly the ocean really doesn’t give a shit about you. – Sean Doherty, Surfer Senior Writer

Yes, I think surfing should be included, and I would absolutely love to surf in the Olympics. It would be such a great honor to represent my country. Plus, it would be a sick competition with the Brazilians teaming together against the other counties. And of course we would win. Haha! Hopefully it will happen. – Gabriel Medina, World Champ

…the thought of surfing in the Olympics brings a familiar dab of bile to my throat. Can we just all agree to pretend, for a little while longer, that surfing is a unique thing to do? That this difference has in fact always been its strength? – Matt Warshaw, Surfer Historian

What is it like to surf in a wave pool? Take a look!

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Baseball at the 1964 Tokyo Games: Hidden in Plain Sight

The baseball cards of Shaun Fitzmaurice and Chuck Dobson, who played in the Olympic baseball exhibition at the Tokyo Games in 1964.
The baseball cards of Shaun Fitzmaurice and Chuck Dobson, who played in the Olympic baseball exhibition at the Tokyo Games in 1964.

Baseball has a long history in Japan, from the time in 1934 when Babe Ruth played in an exhibition series in Japan, to when Hideo Nomo and Ichiro Suzuki exploded on the scene in Major League Baseball, to the recent years of Japan’s success in the World Baseball Classic Series.

But baseball is not an Olympic sport. And it wasn’t in 1964 either.

While baseball was not an official event at the Tokyo Olympics, it was in fact a demonstration sport. On October 11, 1964, a team of 21 American college ball players played a team of Japanese amateur all stars. And the American team went on to win 6 to 2 in front of 50,000 fans at Meiji Stadium.

The baseball cards of Gary Sutherland and Ken Suarez, who played in the Olympic baseball exhibition at the Tokyo Games in 1964.
The baseball cards of Gary Sutherland and Ken Suarez, who played in the Olympic baseball exhibition at the Tokyo Games in 1964.

That was the first of a series of exhibition games that the Americans would have with Japanese teams across the country, in cities like Numazu, Hamamatsu, Nagoya and Osaka. Japanese fans got to see future major leaguers like Chuck Dobson (Athletics), Gary Sutherland (a utility man who played for 7 major league teams), and Shaun Fitzmaurice (Mets), who hit the first pitch of the first exhibition game for a home run.

But the reality is, baseball was not an official event, and was thus given little attention by the press, which may have suited some of the players fine. As told in this interesting history, “Baseball in the Olympics“, by Peter Cava, the American players were not Olympians, and so did not live in the Olympic Village, or live by strict curfews.

The contingent wasn’t considered part of the official U.S. Olympic team. Instead of quarters in the Olympic village, the baseball players found themselves staying in an antiquated YMCA. Eventually the team moved to more suitable lodgings in a Tokyo hotel. They soon became the envy of the other American athletes. Unlike their brethren in the Olympic village, the baseball players weren’t subject to curfew. One team member recalls attending a party with sprinter Bob Hayes and Walt Hazzard of the basketball team. When Hayes and Hazzard had to leave early to make curfew, the baseball player continued to boogie to his heart’s content.

The overriding purpose

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Skateboarding: Can it Replicate the Snowboarding Magic?

Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett

I used to ride a skateboard that looked just like the blue one below, riding it up and down Daniels Street in front of my house, and then taking it up the steeper hill past Coolidge, and bringing it back down that 45 degree incline, wondering if a car was going to speed through the intersection.

It was the early 1970s, and I used to get my polyurethene wheels at a store on Austin Street, learned how to remove the wheels and ball bearings, oil it up and secure the new wheels on to my board.

skateboards

I never got good at all the fancy tricks, but back in the early 70s, that wasn’t the big thing. It was just about going from point A to point B and getting some speed down the hills.

But skateboarding has grown up since I was a kid, and it is serious business, not only in competition, but also in fashion and lifestyle. And it is a central element in the global youth culture. The Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee definitely recognized the trend towards youth, and picked skateboarding on September 28 as one of its five recommended new sports for the 2020 Olympics.

As skateboarding icon and entrepreneur, Tony Hawk, said in this interview with Larry King, “If you look at the success of snowboarding, and how that’s a brought a more youthful edge to the (Winter) Olympics in general…they don’t have that with the Summer Games. They don’t have anything that’s bringing in a younger viewership.”

So maybe it’s skateboarding. But it may have to triumph over a similar young generation sport – sport climbing, or a traditional and former Olympic sport, baseball. Can it convince IOC officials that it is worth the endorsement more than homegrown karate?

But as Hawk explained, it’s no biggie if the IOC fails to recognize the timing and importance of skateboarding as an Olympic sport. “Honestly, I think they need skateboarding than we need them because skateboarding’s popularity is solidified for the most part in a lot of countries.”

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Sport Climbing: One Step Closer

For those who were passionately supporting the inclusion of wushu or bowling into the 2020 Olympics, the decision of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee yesterday must have driven you up the wall.

The five new sports recommended for 2020 in Tokyo includes – sport climbing!

Ashima Shiraishi
Ashima Shiraishi

Sport climbing, which is a series of fixed anchors and bolts on a wall or a rock face, has become very popular over the past two decades. The International Federation of Sports Climbers (IFSC), the international governing body recognized by the IOC, decided to submit sport climbing as a triple challenge, which combines three climbing disciplines into one: bouldering, sport climbing, and speed climbing.

Watch this video for an explanation, and more.

Sport climbing has been embraced by the young, which is one of the major reasons why it is being recommended. The New York Times featured the then nine-year-old child of Japanese parents living in New York named Ashima Shiraishi. And according to her coach at the time, she was the best. She is 14 now and still a powerhouse. In 5 years, she could be an Olympic champion, in Tokyo, in 2020.

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Abe apologizes for costly Olympics stadium fiasco, design rethink | The Japan Times

Abe apologizes for costly Olympics stadium fiasco, design rethink | The Japan Times.

Survey finds only 20% willing to work as volunteers for 2020 Games | The Japan Times

Survey finds only 20% willing to work as volunteers for 2020 Games | The Japan Times.