Those sports are easy to pick up and have active communities on social media, the Paris 2024 organisers noted.

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But some sports added for these Games — baseball/softball and karate — are gone for now.

IOC rules now allow host cities to add sports to their program, so karate made sense in the country it originated. Baseball and softball, which have strong followings here, did too.

But they’re less of a fit in 2024 and won’t be contested then.

That has made it difficult, especially for softball. The sport was in the Olympic program from 1996 to 2008 before making its return in Tokyo. Without it included in the next Games, the athletes who won medals here worry what that will do to their sport in the future.

“You have an entire six teams of people who thought this dream was never going to happen,” said pitcher Cat Osterman, who came back to help the United States to silver after winning medals in 2004 and 2008.

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“So every time you do that, there’s younger and younger girls whose dreams get killed from it. Obviously we’ve shown that it’s a competitive sport. There [are] other sports that aren’t as competitive and they’re not voted out.”

Teammate Monica Abbott said she has seen the response on social media, that she’s heard from people from India, Slovenia and the Czech Republic who are trying to pitch like she does.

“It hurts our sport that it’s going to be potentially another eight years, if not longer,” Abbott said. “Women thrive in this sport. You can be any age, size, shape, colour in this sport. Softball does not discriminate and I think we deserve to be on the Olympic docket on a consistent basis.”

The IOC is aware of the concerns of those sports and the effects their status in the Olympics can have on funding and development, McConnell said, but offering flexibility to host cities is more important.

“If we don’t do it that way, it means that a sport coming in is effectively committed to being in there and that makes the barrier to coming in even higher,” he said.

Softball may well get its chance on the Olympic stage again.

Los Angeles is hosting in 2028, and softball — paired with baseball — seems a likely fit for those Games. So too do skateboarding, which originated in Southern California, and surfing.

“The camaraderie between us is unmatched with any other sport,” said American skateboarder Cory Juneau, a bronze medallist in men’s park. “I think it would be crazy if it wasn’t in future Olympic Games.”

Officials from World Lacrosse, whose CEO is former US Olympic Committee leader Jim Scherr, have said publicly they’d like to get their sport in the Los Angeles Games, and the international federation was granted full recognition in July.

Los Angeles 2028 declined a request to discuss what sports could enter the program. The hosts are due to submit their requested sports to the IOC in early 2022.

USA Today