As the 45 nations are gearing up, the 18th edition of Asian Games is now just a day away. The opening ceremony of the continental multi-sport event is scheduled to happen on Saturday in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the events will follow the next day.
Ahead of the kickoff, we bring you 10 new sports that have been added to the Asian Games for the first time ever since the inception of the tournament back in 1951.
The host nation Indonesia was given the privilege of adding three sports of their choice to the Games. Here is the list of sports that will be making debuts at Asian Games 2018:
Pencak Silat:
Out of the three sports picked by Indonesia for the 2018 Asian Games was Pencak Silat. It is an indigenous form of martial arts rooting mainly from Malay culture, which is spread across Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, the Southern Philippines and Southern Thailand and other places where people converse in the Malay language.
It is considered a form of self-defense and is performed to amplify the human instinct to defend oneself against any kind of threat and danger. It is a full-body fighting form including strikes, tackling and throwing in addition to weaponry. Basically, in the sport, every part of the body is used and subject to attack.
Indian athletes:
Sonia, Simran, and Boynao Singh
Bridge:
Contract Bridge is a card game and requires four players with two players pairing up for a team. According to the rules, with the 52-card deck, each player is given 13 cards each and they aim for scoring more number of points with various tricks.
Indian athletes:
Men: Pranab Bardhan, Sapan Desai, Subhash Gupta, Rajeev Khandelwal, Ajay Khare, Finton Lewis, Debabrata Majumder, Gopinath Manna, Sumit Mukherjee, Shibhnath Dey Sarkar, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, Jaggy Shivdasani, Arun Kumar Sinha, Rajeshwar Tewari and Raju Tolani.
Women: Rita Choksi, Feroza Chothia, Hema Deora, Bharati Dey, Marianne Karmarkar, Himani Khandelwal, Kiran Nadar, Aparna Sain and Vasanti Shah.
Sport Climbing:
One of the exciting additions to the 2018 Asian Games, Sport Climbing, has three different categories - Speed, Speed Relay and Combined.
In the case of Speed Climbing, two competitors are up against each other as they climb a 15-meter high wall that has footholds and handholds.
On the other hand, Speed Relay involves athletes from a country teaming up in the speed climbing event. To begin with, an athlete climbs the 15-meter wall before the other athlete from his/her country begins climbing from the bottom of the wall.
Meanwhile, Combined Climbing is relatively harder which will involve bouldering and lead climbing.
Indian athletes:
Men: Chingkheinganba Maibam, Bharath Stephen Pereira Kamath
Women: Shreya Sanjay Nankar
Rollersport:
The sport of rollersport has been slowly gaining popularity among the young athletes in the recent times and there are no surprises that it has been included as one of the events in the 2018 Asian Games.
Rollersport involves two categories - Skateboard and Roller Stake (20km race).
Indian athletes:
Men: Amitesh Mishra, Harshveer Singh Sekhon
Women: Aarathy Kasturi Raj, Varsha Puranik
Ju-jitsu:
The other sport making a debut at the upcoming 2018 Asian Games is Ju-jitsu, one of the most popular martial art styles rooted from Japan.
Unlike several forms of martial arts, in Ju-jitsu athletes are not allowed to punch or kick and most of the action takes place on the ground.
A player wins when he/she successfully completes a submission move using a lock on joints and strangulation.
Sambo:
It is another form of martial arts that thrived in Russia. It is a combination of wrestling, judo, ju-jitsu, boxing among others.
Jet Ski:
Although Jet Ski has been a part of Asian Beach Games, it will be its maiden appearance at the Asian Games. It will be contested on the Ancol Indonesian Beach between August 23 and 26.
While six different categories of the sport are played in the beach event — Runabout open, runabout 1000, runabout endurance, runabout stock, open ski and sports GP, the upcoming 2018 Asian Games will include only four categories - Runabout 1000, Ski Modified, Runabout Limited and Endurance Runabout Open.
Paragliding:
While Paragliding all this while was considered as a recreational sport, it is all set to make its first appearance at the continental multi-sport event.
It will be contested in two different race formats — cross country and aerobatics. The sport judges a player’s ability to control the parachute after starting from a height.
3x3 Basketball:
This category of basketball is clearly gaining popularity in the recent times. It will make its debut at the 2018 Asian Games and will also be included for the first time at the Olympics in the Tokyo edition in 2020.
The sport is played on half of the normal basketball court. The match lasts for only 10 minutes with a 12-second shot-clock and there are no quarters or half-times.
A game is over at 21 points, unlike the traditional 5x5 which has no limits when it comes to the number of points scored.
Kurash:
It is a form of martial arts from Uzbekistan. The sport, which was a part of the Asian Indoor Games 2017, sees the two wrestlers try to throw one another to the ground.
If a wrestler is thrown to the back, he/she loses the bout. If thrown on the side or on the belly, points are awarded to the opponent.
