Baseball/Softball officially apply for inclusion in 2020 Tokyo Games

Submitted by justingoblue on

 

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, Riccardo Fraccari, today announced that the world governing body has submitted an official proposal to the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (TOCOG) for the addition of men’s baseball and women’s softball at the 2020 Games.

“It is an honour for the World Baseball Softball Confederation to submit the application to Tokyo 2020 organisers,” said President Fraccari, “and on behalf of baseball and softball, I would like to fully thank and recognise IOC President Thomas Bach for his Olympic Agenda 2020 vision, which has created this exciting new process for new sports-events, like baseball and softball, to be considered for the world’s biggest sports stage, the Olympic Games.”

 

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Softball/News/2015/June/11/WBSC-submits-appl…

Tokyo organizers have until September 30 to review the application, and an IOC vote in August 2016 will decide its fate.

For those that don't know, softball is a relatively popular sport in Japan. The Japanese Softball Association is a very high level of competition and it's unlikely an Olympic stadium in Tokyo would suffer the same fate as the one in Athens.

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gjking

June 11th, 2015 at 7:33 PM ^

I am fine with baseball and softball as long as wrestling is already in there. Wrestling is much more important as an Olympic sport in my opinion because the sport would die without the Olympics.

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