Lausanne, Switzerland, January 8, 2020: The IOC Executive Board on Wednesday approved the period of October 22 to November 9, 2022 for the 4th Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal. It will be the first Olympic event on the African continent.
The YOG period was chosen following an extensive consultation with the National Olympic Committees, International Federations and the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
For the large majority of athletes, the proposal better suits the school curriculum. From a climate standpoint, the YOG will take place at the beginning of the dry season. And for Dakar and Senegal, the dates coincide with Africa Youth Day (November 1), which is an important milestone in the calendar – school pupils will have more time to participate and contribute.
The IOC EB also approved the request from the Dakar 2022 Organising Committee to add baseball5 and wushu to the sports programme.
The inclusion of baseball5, along with the already-approved breaking, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing, means that all sports from the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 proposals are now included in the Dakar 2022 programme.
Baseball5 has been approved for the programme as the youthful and new urban version of baseball/softball. The inclusion makes it the first Olympic team sport to be mixed gender, with four women and four men competing together for the medals.
This will be the first time that wushu has been included in the YOG sports programme, although it appeared at Nanjing 2014 as part of the Sports Lab activation. There will be two men’s and two women’s events on the programme.
As per the full programme, the events and athlete quotas for the new sports are gender balanced.