Brisbane 2032: sports adopt microchips and ninja courses to try to stay on Olympic program

Australia’s 19-year-old race walker Isaac Beacroft won Commonwealth Games gold in Glasgow this year, but his event faces possible removal from the core Olympic program as the International Olympic Committee conducts reviews in Switzerland ahead of Brisbane 2032. Sports including surfing, skateboarding and climbing are among those being considered for culling in those deliberations.

Federations are proposing rule and format changes to bolster their cases, ranging from microchips in competitors’ shoes to replacing horse riding in modern pentathlon with a ninja-style obstacle course. Canoe sprint is moving its emphasis from longer races to the shorter, more explosive 500m events, while race walking proponents have suggested changing the distance from 20,000 metres to a half marathon. The IOC plans a reduction in the number of sports and has capped athlete numbers at 10,500, a shift that forces emerging disciplines to compete with traditional events such as fencing and wrestling. In assessing each "discipline"—for example treating track and road cycling separately—the committee is weighing television audience, cost and complexity of facilities, and the size of an event’s athlete cohort.

Beacroft, who won gold in Glasgow thanks to a final-lap surge, said fitting walkers with a tiny chip that "detects the flight time" would remove subjectivity from judging and strengthen the sport’s Olympic bid. He described that proposal — alongside moving to a half marathon distance — as "the race walkers’ play to keep it in the Olympics." He added: "That’s going to go a long way in creating some sort of reliability and respect towards the sport."

Other sports have already altered formats or are under scrutiny; modern pentathlon has removed its horse riding phase in favour of a ninja obstacle course, and canoe sprint is prioritising 500m races. Australia’s potential podium contenders who could be affected include skateboarders Arisa Trew and Chloe Covell, climber Oceana Mackenzie ("currently ranked second in the world in bouldering") and surfers such as "world No 1" Molly Picklum. If disciplines are excluded from the IOC’s core list, hosts would need to select them as one of four additional sports — a route used to include breaking in Paris.

The IOC’s "fit for future" review will scrutinise sports with bespoke venues such as triathlon and those with large athlete quotas like rowing and hockey. The traditional heavyweights — swimming, gymnastics and athletics — are expected to retain their places; athletics had 1,810 competitors at LA 2028 or close to one-fifth of the entire athlete body, though some specific events and disciplines, such as race walking, remain vulnerable.

A further complication is cost: the local organising committee would bear the expense of staging any additional sports removed from the core program, raising the risk of budget overruns if popular Australian sports with large fields or complex venues are excluded. At the Future Brisbane conference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said "One of the things I’ve said is that it’s Queensland’s games, it’s their decision," and added: "They could consider, just as the Paris Games had surfing in Tahiti, and all of the Games aren’t always just in the city where they’re held, if you want to save money and save time, then you could give consideration to that." Co-funded by the state and federal governments, $7.1bn has been committed to Games venue infrastructure, but organisers say a detailed budget cannot be finalised until the IOC decides which events will form the programme; by the new year the IOC expects to publish the list of core disciplines and to rule out some fringe proposals.

Beacroft said he remained hopeful despite the uncertainty, admitting: "You don’t want to be in denial about it or anything like that … I kind of keep my fingers crossed that it’s going to be in Brisbane, because that’s a massive goal of mine and a big, big motivator for my career." The final decision on the full Olympic programme will be taken at the IOC session in April next year.