Управление соревнованиями и федерациями по Non-Olympic sports

Olympic sports are sports that are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games. The 2024 Summer Olympics included 32 sports; the 2022 Winter Olympics included seven sports. Each Olympic sport is represented at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by an international governing body called an International Federation (IF).

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo saw the introduction of four new sports, with karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing making their Olympic debuts. Breakdancing made its debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, and ski mountaineering made its debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. Flag football and squash will make their debuts at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, while cricket and lacrosse will return after long absences.

From the 18th century onwards, researchers took a greater interest in the value of traditional games in elucidating cultural values and identities. The modern Olympic Games, founded by Pierre de Coubertin on the basis of "All games, all nations", were influenced by this thinking; at the 1904 Summer Olympics, de Coubertin arranged "Anthropological Days", which allowed athletes from Asia, Africa, and South America to demonstrate their regional games. However, the 1904 organizers marginalized this aspect of the Olympics, and it quickly faded away after a few years, with mainly only Western sports being played.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) considers an Olympic sport to comprise all disciplines governed by an international sports federation. A discipline is defined as one or more events within a sport requiring either a dedicated field of play or a significant modification of another discipline's field of play, generally involving a separate group of athletes. For example, aquatics is a summer Olympic sport that includes six disciplines: swimming, artistic swimming, diving, water polo, open water swimming, and high diving (a non-Olympic discipline), all of which are governed at the international level by World Aquatics. Skating is a winter Olympic sport represented by the International Skating Union, and includes three IOC-recognized disciplines: figure skating, speed skating and short-track speed skating. The sport with the largest number of Olympic disciplines is skiing, with six: alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding, freestyle skiing and freeriding.

Other notable multi-discipline sports are gymnastics (artistic, rhythmic, and trampoline), cycling (road, track, mountain, and BMX), volleyball (indoors and beach), wrestling (freestyle and Greco-Roman), canoeing (flatwater and slalom), and bobsleigh (includes skeleton). The disciplines listed here are only those contested in the Olympics—gymnastics has two non-Olympic disciplines, while cycling and wrestling have three each.

The IOC definition of a "discipline" may differ from that used by an international federation. For example, the IOC considers artistic gymnastics a single discipline, but the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) classifies men's and women's artistic gymnastics as separate disciplines. Similarly, the IOC considers freestyle wrestling to be a single discipline, but United World Wrestling classifies women's freestyle wrestling as the separate discipline of "female wrestling".

An event, by IOC definition, is a competition that leads to the award of medals. Therefore, the sport of aquatics includes a total of 46 Olympic events, of which 32 are in the discipline of swimming, eight in diving, and two each in artistic swimming, water polo, and open water swimming. The number of events per sport ranges from a minimum of two (until 2008, there were sports with only one event) to a maximum of 48 in athletics, which despite its large number of diverse events is not divided into separate disciplines like aquatics is.

Sports eligible for inclusion in the Olympic programme are only those governed by international federations recognized by the IOC, as stated in Bye-laws 1.3.2 and 1.4.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023). The opportunity to propose additional sports to the programme is at the full discretion of the respective Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and subject to the final decision of the IOC Session.

In the past, several criteria concerning widely practiced sports, disciplines or events have been abolished. However, the number of sports remains constrained by athlete and event limits. According to Bye-law 3.2 to Rule 45 of the Olympic Charter (2023), Summer Olympics should be approximately limited to 10,500 athletes, 5,000 coaches and support personnel and 310 events, while Winter Olympics should be capped at around 2,900 athletes, 2,000 coaches and support personnel and 100 events, unless agreed to otherwise by the Organizing Committee. These thresholds are likely to be surpassed for the 2028 Summer Olympics; sports director Kit McConnell stated that they would aim to "limit the increase, but limit the impact on the existing sport".

In previous years, sports that depend primarily on mechanical propulsion, such as motor sports, could not be considered for recognition as Olympic sports, though there were power-boating events in 1908 before this rule was enacted by the IOC. The rule excluding motorsports was removed from the Olympic Charter in 2016. The FIA (governing body for automobile sports), FIM (governing body for motorcycle sports), FAI (governing body for air sports) and UIM (governing body for powerboating) are recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and therefore, in theory, could be eligible for inclusion at future Olympic Games.

The list of Olympic sports has changed considerably during the course of Olympic history, and has gradually increased over time.

The Olympic Charter decrees that Olympic sports for each edition of the Olympic Games should be decided at an IOC Session no later than seven years prior to the Games.

The only summer sports that hav