In news– World Athletics Council recently announced that they were set to introduce a repechage round in individual track events from 200m to 1500m races for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
What is repechage?
- Repechage refers to a second chance.
- If a sport has repechage, it means that the athlete will get one more chance to compete and move into further rounds and possibly the final, even if they have lost once in the initial rounds.
- In athletics, the repechage round would mean that every individual event track athlete from 200m to 1500m would race twice at the Olympics.
- According to World Athletics, the events at the Olympics would now consist of a round one, repechage round, semi-finals and finals.
- Repechage for the 100m race was not included because the event already has preliminary heats in place.
- According to the current rules, athletes qualify when they place at the top of their heats or post the fastest times in their heat.
- Repechage is currently part of wrestling and taekwondo at the Olympics in a similar fashion.
- For both events, if a participant loses in the first round and their opponent reaches the final, then that participant would need to wrestle against the finalists’ second-round opponent and move up to the bronze medal position.
- The bronze medal is the upper limit of the repechage in wrestling with finalists from both brackets facing each other for a gold medal match.
- In judo, which is also an Olympic sport, four of the quarterfinal losers are made to face each other with the winners then facing the losers of the semi-final bout.
- Whoever wins that match, wins the bronze – and like wrestling, there are two bronze medals up for grabs.
- Other sports like rowing and track cycling also have repechage rounds.
- The World Athletics Council ratified the decision and also made the repechage applicable for hurdles events.
Olympic Games-
- The Olympic Games are the world’s only truly global, multi-sport, celebratory athletics competition, with more than 200 countries participating in over 400 events.
- Olympic sports are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games.
- Each Olympic sport is represented by an international governing body, namely an International Federation (IF).
- The International Olympic Committee(IOC) is the guardian of the Olympic Games and the leader of the Olympic Movement.
- The IOC establishes a hierarchy of sports, disciplines, and events.
- According to this hierarchy, each Olympic sport can be subdivided into multiple disciplines, which are often mistaken as distinct sports.
The 2024 Summer Olympics-
- It is officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiadand also known as Paris 2024.
- It is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 26 July to 11 August 2024 with Paris as its main host city and 16 cities spread across Metropolitan France and one in the French overseas territory of Tahiti as subsites.
- Having previously hosted in 1900 and 1924, Paris will become the second city to host the Summer Olympics three times after London (1908, 1948 and 2012).
- The Games will mark the centenary of the Paris Games of 1924, the sixth Olympic games hosted by France (three in summer and three in winter), and the first Olympic Games in France since the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville.
- 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles.
World Athletics Council–
- World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (from 1912 to 2001) and International Association of Athletics Federations (from 2001 to 2019, both abbreviated as the IAAF) is the international governing body for the sport of athletics, covering track and field, cross country running, road running, race walking, mountain running, and ultra running.
- The role of Council is to govern the sport of athletics.
- It was formed in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912.
- It is headquartered in Monaco.
- It is responsible for all decisions related to the sport of athletics, as well as for the conduct and management of the sport and its disciplines.
- Council consists of 26 elected members, including the President, four Vice-Presidents, six Area Presidents (elected by each Area Association), the Chair of the Athletes‘ Commission and one other member of the Athletes’ Commission (elected by members of the Athletes’ Commission) and thirteen Individual Council Members.
- There cannot be more than one Council Member from any one Member Federation country.
- World Athletics suspended the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) from World Athletics starting in 2015, for eight years, due to doping violations, making it ineligible to host World Athletics events or send teams to international championships.
Source: The Indian Express
