Paris 2024 Olympic Games Event Program Announced

Dec 08 2020

The executive board (EB) of the international Olympic Committee (IOC) has approved the event programme and athlete quotas for the Olympic Games Paris 2024, which are centred on gender equality and youth.

IOC Announcement

In accordance with the recommendations of the Olympic Programme Commission, the main features of Paris 2024’s Olympic programme include:

  • Exactly 50 per cent male and female participation, following on from the gender equality already achieved for Tokyo 2020, which will have 48.8 per cent female participation.
  • Growth of mixed gender events, from 18 to 22, compared to Tokyo 2020.
  • Skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and breaking confirmed as additional sports based on a proposal by Paris 2024. Breaking will make its Olympic debut.
  • Reduction in the overall athlete quota (including all new sports) to exactly 10,500.
  • Reduction in the overall number of events, with a final programme of 329 events.

“With this programme, 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. While we will achieve gender equality already at the upcoming Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, we will see for the first time in Olympic history the participation of the exact same number of female athletes as male athletes. There is also a strong focus on youth,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.

The highest quota reduction was made in weightlifting, which had four events removed from the programme. The sport now has five events per gender, with a quota of 120 athletes, compared to 196 in Tokyo (and prior to that, 260 at Rio 2016), with the specific weight classes to be finalised by the IWF in the fourth quarter of 2021.

In making its decisions about weightlifting, the IOC EB considered its strong concerns with regard to the governance of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) and the doping history of the sport. It also reiterated that the place of weightlifting on the programme of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 continues to be subject to ongoing review by the IOC.

The full programme of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 is available here.

The International Weightlifting Federation issued the following statement:

“Clean weightlifters continue to pay a woefully heavy price for inadequate governance and for those — from a relatively limited number of countries — who tried to take shortcuts to success at London 2012 and Beijing 2008.

Thanks to help from independent experts like our partners at the ITA, we have already reformed the IWF’s anti-doping practices. And thanks to the help of independent experts, we are now reforming the IWF’s governance.

I believe we can meet the IOC’s criteria for remaining on the Paris 2024 Olympic programme and even reach the point where we restore Olympic weightlifting opportunities for a new generation of clean weightlifters. We have already embarked on a journey towards radical governance reform. But we must be under no illusion about the scope and scale of change required.”