Tug of war and croquet were once Olympic sports
The early modern Olympics handed out medals in croquet, tug of war, polo, jeu de paume and even motorboat racing. All eight of those sports have since vanished. Meanwhile breakdancing, surfing and skateboarding have arrived, and cricket is due back in Los Angeles in 2028 after a long absence.
Before 1924, each organising committee chose its own programme, so some sports appeared only briefly before the International Olympic Committee took charge. Throughout much of the 20th century hosts also staged demonstration sports to showcase a local game or test a new one; medals in those did not count, though baseball and taekwondo later joined the official list in 1992 and 2000. A handful of summer sports have never been missing: athletics, swimming, cycling, fencing and artistic gymnastics. On the winter side, Nordic skiing, figure and speed skating, and ice hockey have featured every time, and figure skating and hockey actually appeared at summer Games in 1908 and 1920 before the first Winter Olympics in 1924.
The official vocabulary is layered. A sport is everything governed by one international federation; a discipline needs its own field of play or a heavily modified one; an event is anything that awards medals. Aquatics, for example, spans six disciplines and 46 events, 32 of them in swimming alone. Athletics has the most events of any sport, 48, yet is not split into disciplines. Federations sometimes count differently from the IOC, treating men's and women's artistic gymnastics as separate disciplines.
Space is limited. The Olympic Charter caps the summer Games at roughly 10,500 athletes and 310 events, and the winter Games at about 2,900 athletes and 100 events, and the sports for each Games must be settled at least seven years ahead. Motor sports were long barred, although powerboats raced in 1908; that ban was removed from the charter in 2016.
Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Games around the motto all games, all nations, and at the 1904 Games he organised Anthropological Days for athletes to show regional games from Asia, Africa and South America. The 2024 Paris Games featured 32 sports, and Los Angeles will add flag football and squash.
Source: Olympic sports
