All equestrian disciplines will go ahead at the Paris 2024 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed.
The full quota of 200 combinations across the three disciplines with six medal chances also remains untouched.
The news, which came as part of the IOC executive board online meeting on Monday (7 December), has been welcomed by the equestrian world.
FEI president and IOC member Ingmar De Vos said the confirmation shows the efforts the horse world has put in to increase its fan base and improve its digital offering to the world.
“We are very happy to receive formal approval of our three disciplines for Paris 2024 from the IOC executive board and also confirmation that our athlete quota remains untouched at 200”, said Mr De Vos.
“This confirmation is also a token of appreciation for the efforts the FEI and the equestrian community have made to increase the fan base and improve digital figures for our sport. We really appreciate that the IOC didn’t touch our quota as we knew they needed to reduce the overall Games-wide quota to 10,500 athletes, but our sport has grown so much over the last decade that a reduction of our quota would have been detrimental to the universality of our Olympic competitions.”
Equestrian sport keeps its quota of 75 combinations for jumping, 65 for eventing and 60 for dressage at the 2024 Games, which will be staged in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, as well as team and individual medals for all three disciplines.
IOC director general Christophe De Kepper provided individual sporting federations with event details and athlete quotas in an official letter.
Major news to come out of yesterday’s meeting was that breakdancing, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing now join the ranks of Olympic sports.
There will be 10 fewer medal events in Paris than in Tokyo — four of these have been taken from weightlifting, which has also had its athlete quota more than halved from its Rio 2016 total. This was in large part owing to concerns surrounding the governance of weightlifting’s international governing body and doping history in the sport.
Boxing has also had a large reduction in its athlete quota, with 34 places removed, with the IOC taking ongoing concerns about the International Boxing Association into account when making its decision.
There has been a push for gender equality for the Olympics — something equestrian sport can already boast in that men and women compete on equal terms for the same sets of medals.
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A statement from the IOC states that the Tokyo Games will be “the first gender equal” Olympics, with an overall 48.8% female participation.
It adds this will be “further increased” in Paris, with the exact same number of male and female athletes “for the first time in Olympic history”, with 28 of the 32 sports in the 2024 programme “fully gender balanced” and increase in mixed events from 18 in Tokyo to 22 at the next Games.
“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.
“With this programme, we are making the Olympic Games Paris 2024 fit for the post-corona world.”
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