program for the Beijing 2008

Program for the Beijing 2008

The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens. Overall nine new events will be held, which include two from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometers, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre will replace men's team foil and women's team epee. In mid-2006, video gamers held talks with the Chinese government in hopes of allowing video games to be a demonstration sport at the games. Demonstration events have not been held at any Olympic Games (Summer or Winter) since 1992. On August 7, 2006, a day before the 2-year countdown to the Beijing Games, the Beijing Organizing Committee released pictograms of the 35 Olympic disciplines. Each pictogram is designed so that people of nations around the world can recognize the different sports being played at the Olympic Games. This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram's likeness to Chinese seal script.[46] The following are the sports to be contested at the games. The Olympic sport of aquatics has been split into its constituent disciplines of diving, swimming, synchronized swimming, and water polo. The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses. * Archery (4) * Athletics (47) * Badminton (5) * Baseball (1) * Basketball (2) * Boxing (11) * Canoeing (16) * Cycling (18) * Diving (8) * Equestrian (6) * Fencing (10) * Field Hockey (2) * Football/Soccer (2) * Gymnastics (18) * Handball (2) * Judo (14) * Modern pentathlon (2) * Rowing (14) * Sailing (11) * Shooting (15) * Softball (1) * Swimming (34) * Synchronized swimming (2) * Table tennis (4) * Taekwondo (8) * Tennis (4) * Triathlon (2) * Volleyball (4) * Water polo (2) * Weightlifting (15) * Wrestling (18)