The List of Olympic Sports

The list of Olympic sports is not exactly written in stone. The list of Olympic sports consists of all of the games, contests, and events of both the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games. Currently the Olympic sports list consists of 35 sports with 53 disciplines and more than 400 events, which are divided into Summer Olympic events and Winter Olympic events. The Summer Olympic events include 28 sports with 38 disciplines, and the Winter Olympic events include 7 sports with 15 disciplines. (The 400 events include all of the qualifying competitions and heats.)

The list of Olympic sports is fluid. Polo and tug of war are sports that were once Olympic sports but are no longer included. But just because a sport is dropped doesn't mean that it will never be included again. Tennis, for example, was dropped but was reinstated in 1972. Curling was also dropped and reinstated in 1988.

Baseball and softball will be played at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, but they will not be included thereafter unless they are reinstated.

In order for a sport to be included on the Olympics sports list, it must be widely practiced in at least 75 countries, on at least four continents. But just because a sport meets those requirement it doesn't mean that it will be included on the Olympics sports list. And if it is included on the list, that doesn't mean that it will actually be played at the Olympic Games.

Some sports are just simply sports without subcategories. That is, baseball is baseball, basketball is basketball, and tennis is tennis. But some sports are broken down into subcategories, or "disciplines." The aquatics category, for example, consists of diving, swimming, synchronized swimming, and water polo.