LA28 Event Program Approved; Female Athletes to be in Majority

Female athletes will be in the majority at an Olympics for the first time at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles after the soccer competition was flipped to have 16 women’s teams and 12 men’s teams.

For the first time in history, all team sports will have at least the same number of women’s teams as men’s teams. That decision by the IOC executive board helped push the core quota of athletes for LA to 50.7% women and 49.3% men — 5,333 for women and 5,167 for men, the IOC said.

The gap is closed slightly when athletes for the sports being added specially to the LA28 program — involving 322 female and 376 male competitors — are included. Those sports include cricket, flag football and lacrosse.

“The message of gender equality is a really important one for us,” Outgoing IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said. ““We really thank LA 28 for supporting this. It’s central to their vision as well.”

The LA28 program maintains the athlete quota of 10,500, with an extra 698 places allocated for baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash. Squash will have 16 men and 16 women playing in singles while the other team sports will be six-country events.

There will also be an additional women’s weight category in boxing and two additional women’s water polo teams. There will be expanded mixed events in archery, athletics (4x100m mixed relay), golf, gymnastics, rowing coastal beach sprint and table tennis.

The IOC also approved new medal opportunities in several sports; 3×3 basketball will be expanded from eight teams to 12 per gender and sport climbing boulder and lead events will be separate medal events. Swimming will have 50-meter backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke events for both men and women. With the moves, swimming will feature 41 medal events at the Games for the first time, an increase from the 35 medal events at Paris 2024 and Tokyo 2020. There will now be 55 medal events at LA28, the most ever for any sport at a Games.

“Today’s decision is a testament to the continued evolution of swimming at the Olympic Games,” World Aquatics President Husain Al Musallam said. “Including these six new events enhances the programme’s balance and adds more opportunities for athletes to showcase their skills on the world’s biggest stage. We thank the IOC for their support in expanding Olympic swimming and can’t wait to watch these incredible athletes compete under the Southern California sky and stars in SoFi Stadium.”

The progress for women athletes was made at an online board meeting Wednesday co-chaired in Lausanne for the first time by Kirsty Coventry as president-elect since her win last month. In June she will formally replace her mentor Thomas Bach and become the IOC’s first female leader in its 131-year history.

2030 Host Contract Signed

The IOC Executive Board also approved the IOC’s countersigning of the French Alps 2030 Olympic Host Contract. The French Alps were elected to host the 2030 Games at the 142nd IOC Session in Paris and since then, two successive governments have provided guarantees and the French Parliament approved the budget law in February.

Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote to the IOC in Marc and included commitments with respect to the next steps of the budget law. In the same letter, financial commitment of the French Government was issued, which allowed for the two regions (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur) to also confirm their financial engagement.