LA28 Olympics to be the first female-majority Games as IOC locks in competition plan
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The 2028 Olympics will be the first to feature more women than men, the International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday after approving the medal events and athletes quota for them.
The IOC announced an athlete quota of 10,500 in 31 core sports, which matches the Paris Games, the first Olympics to achieve gender parity. Including the five new sports that will debut in L.A., a total of 11,198 Olympians will participate in the 2028 Games and 50.5% will be female.
Citing high ticket demand for women’s events in Paris, broadcast numbers that are equal to or higher than men’s sports, increased media coverage and greater international investment in women’s sports, IOC sport director Kit McConnell called the first female-majority Olympics “a complete package.”
“All merit-based and all reflected in both participation and popularity,” he said in a virtual news briefing.
Talks have broken down between Santa Monica and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic organizers over the city potentially playing host to beach volleyball competitions.
The shift is highlighted by an expanded women’s soccer field that features 16 countries compared to 12 in the men’s field. That will be a first, as FIFA previously called for 12 women’s teams and 16 men’s teams.
Women also will 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.
The IOC has emphasized gender equality in recent Olympic cycles by including more female athletes, medal events in women’s sports and mixed-gender team events. The 2028 program will include new mixed team medal opportunities 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 1,600-meter relay debuted during the 2020 Olympics, the track and field program in 2028 will include a 400-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.
L.A. 2028 Summer Olympics organizers say they are on track to reach about $2 billion in sponsorships by year’s end, moving closer to the $2.5 billion needed.
Swimming will feature six more medal opportunities with the addition of 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 three-on-three basketball field will expand from eight teams to 12 on both the men’s and women’s sides.
LA28’s venue master plan was approved by the IOC executive board, but the organizing committee did not share the full plan publicly Tuesday as negotiations with several proposed host cities still are underway. Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director, said the plan adhered to the goals of maximizing existing venues, not building new permanent infrastructure, maximizing opportunities inside Los Angeles and grouping venues to avoid standalone sites.
The Rose Bowl announced it is hosting 2028 Olympics soccer finals on the same day an L.A. City Council committee approved an adjusted venues plan.
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 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 last 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 of building a new competition venue in the Sepulveda Basin.
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