Switzerland: Dakar 2022 will be the first Olympic event to take place in Africa.
In the next Youth Olympic Games the number of archers are expected to increase to a total of 96, which would be a 50% increase. The final approval is subject to the International Olympic Committee’s executive board.
In the first 3 editions of the Youth Games in Singapore, Nanjing and Buenos Aires, 64 athletes had competed.
The additional spaces will be split across male and female athletes to retain gender equity. Forty-eight boys and 48 girls aged between 14 and 17 will compete in the archery events at Dakar 2022.
The structure of the Archery competition at the Youth Olympics is also in the process of changing.
This will transform into a standard mixed team competition for 2022 to go along with the individual boys’ and girls’ events.
So rather than the mixed team event being won by a pair of mixed nationalities, it will be a third archery medal awarded to a single nation. (This will come just two years after the senior Olympics awards its first mixed team medal in Tokyo.)
Dakar 2022 will be the first Olympics of any kind to feature full gender equality with a 50-50 split of quota places available to male and female athletes across all 33 sports.
The archery competition at Buenos Aires 2018 brought historic first Olympic medals for Thailand, Argentina and Namibia. India won its first in the sport at Nanjing 2014.
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