The United States was the only country to place both men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics teams on the Olympic podium in Paris. In L.A., the Americans will have the opportunity to join forces.
The International Olympic Committee executive board approved the medal events program and athlete quota for the 2028 Olympic Games on Tuesday, adding new mixed gender team events in artistic gymnastics, track and field, golf, archery, table tennis and coastal rowing to create a record number of medal events.
After a mixed gender 4×400-meter relay debuted during the 2020 Olympics, the athletics program in 2028 will include a 4×100-meter mixed gender relay. The format for the artistic gymnastics mixed team event will be finalized by the International Gymnastics Federation at a later date.
Mixed gender events, which have been gaining traction in recent Olympic cycles, were cited as examples of the IOC’s commitment to gender equality, placing women and men on the same playing field.
For the first time in Olympic history, the Games will have more female athletes than men, led by an expanded women’s soccer field. The Olympic soccer tournament will feature 16 countries on the women’s side compared to 12 in the men’s field. Of the 10,500 athletes approved for the core 31 sports, 5,333 will be women.
Women will also have equal quota spots in water polo and boxing for the first time. The water polo field will include 12 teams for both men and women and boxing will have seven weight classes for each competition.
Swimming will feature six more medal opportunities by adding men’s and women’s 50-meter events for backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly to the current 50-meter freestyle race.
Climbing, which had four medal events in Paris, will have six in L.A. by splitting the previously combined disciplines of boulder and lead in addition to speed climbing.
The 3×3 basketball field will expand from eight teams to 12 on both the men’s and women’s sides.
LA28’s updated venue plan was approved by the IOC executive board, but the organizing committee did not share the full plan publicly Tuesday as negotiations are still underway with several proposed host cities.
Talks to host Olympic beach volleyball in Santa Monica broke down last week as the deadline for the IOC presentation approached. LA28 had earmarked the beach near the iconic Santa Monica Pier as one of its cornerstone venues for the Games since its first bid nearly a decade ago.
Before bringing the venue plan to the IOC on Tuesday, LA28 got unanimous approval from the Los Angeles City Council to move several sports outside of the city, but the vote was not without questions. Council members asked the committee for further transparency regarding the private group’s budget, and Councilmember Tim McOsker has pushed to move the sailing competition to San Pedro instead of in Long Beach, as LA28 has previously announced. Long Beach hosted the sailing competition in the 1984 Olympics and is set to host several other sports in 2028, including water polo, handball and triathlon. San Pedro, which falls within McOsker’s district, has hosted Sail Grand Prix races in each of the past two years, welcoming international sailors to the Port of Los Angeles.
Six politicians representing Temecula and Riverside county sent a letter Tuesday night to double down on their support for Galway Downs as the site for equestrian events. The letter urged IOC President Thomas Bach, LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman and Los Angeles City Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson to keep the equestrian events at the 242-acre facility in Temecula that was targeted as an alternative to LA28’s initial plan building a new competition venue in the Sepulveda Basin.