New Delhi: 

Female athletes will be greater in number than their male counterpart for the first time in Olympics, the International Olympic Committee announced on Wednesday in a major push for gender equality at the 2028 LA Games.

Apart from football, an additional women’s weight category was added in boxing, while maintaining equal numbers of athlete quotas for men and women, like in Paris 2024.

In water polo, two additional women’s teams will be added for gender parity in the athlete quota and number of teams.

In archery, athletics (4x100m mixed relay), golf, gymnastics, rowing coastal beach sprint and table tennis a new mixed team event will be added.

The 50m backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke events for both men and women in Swimming will be introduced while in rowing: women’s solo (CW1x), men’s solo (CM1x) and mixed double sculls (CX2x) will make their debut.

The discipline of sport climbing will have boulder and lead as separate medal events. Basketball 3×3, which made its debut at Tokyo 2020 with eight teams each for men and women, was expanded to include 12 teams per gender.

The introduction of compound archery brightens India’s chances of an Olympic medal. India have never won an Olympic medal in archery but will fancy their chances now as their compound archers have performed better than their recurve counterparts in recent years.

“For the first time in history, all team sports will have at least the same number of women’s teams as men’s teams, with water polo adding two women’s teams, making it now 12 women’s and 12 men’s teams,” the IOC said in a statement.

“Gender equality was a key consideration when deciding on the athlete quota and the number of events. In the initial sports programme, with 10,500 athletes, the number of female athletes is 5,333 and the number of male athletes 5,167.

“The additional sports add 322 female athletes and 376 male athletes. In addition, six mixed events were added to the event programme. Out of 351 events, there are 161 women’s events, 165 men’s events and 25 mixed events.”

Women’s football was a big winner as it will be bigger than the men’s edition for the first time. A total of 16 women teams and 12 men’s team will take part at LA 2028, flipping the balance as 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams competed at Paris 2024.

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