The International Olympic Committee has decided to host virtual games and this will be in the creation of a new chapter in history. The sporting events will be held virtually, that is by playing a virtual version of the 5 events, which are motorsport, cycling, baseball, sailing, and rowing. as of now, it is decided that what is going to be the virtual meta of the sport like for motorsport is Gran Turismo and for cycling, it will be Zwift. Zwift will let you pair with your bike and a bike trainer with the computers or other devices.
However, the announcement only stated that the games were just more like a virtual representation of the games that were somehow related to any sport. What we were really expecting was that it was somewhat like a gaming tournament type. At least for now, though, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is intentionally choosing to host competitions in virtual versions of physical sports.
“WE REMAIN A SPORT-BASED AND SPORT-FOCUSED ORGANIZATION”
“I think it’s fair to say that we remain a sport-based and sport-focused organization,” the IOC’s sports director, Kit McConnell, told The Verge in an interview. “We’re looking to keep the Olympic Virtual Series focused around sports titles.”
It seems that IOC is not much interested in esports but the scenario is different in this case because the IOC is in touch with the esports communities and mostly because the players are playing games . “We don’t think there’s any mutual exclusivity between the esports community and the traditional sports community,” McConnell said.
The IOC also wants to find ways to help support esports players similarly to how it supports athletes in traditional sports. “As elite esports and gaming competitors are relatively new to the highly competitive environment, they have more limited access to resources than athletes in traditional sports,” the IOC says in its latest strategic roadmap, which was released in March. “The IOC recognizes these challenges and aims to adapt various existing tools and resources to support them in different fields such as gender equality, mental and physical health, competition integrity and career transition.”
THE 2028 OLYMPICS COULD HAVE A VIRTUAL VERSION OF A PHYSICAL SPORT
IOC has recognized the potential of esports and virtual representation of the sports there is a possibility that a virtual representation of a physical sport could become one as early as the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, according to that roadmap.
To be clear, the actual language in the roadmap does not make that a sure bet. The roadmap has a “recommendation” to “consider the addition of physical virtual sports in the Olympic Programme in cooperation with the respective International Federations.” But if that became a reality, you could expect to see it take a similar form to what’s being done for the cycling and rowing events for the Olympic Virtual Series, McConnell said. (Of the five sports in the Olympic Virtual Series, only those two require players to compete on physical hardware.)
So while we may not see a League of Legends team adorned in Olympic gold medals anytime soon, virtual sports might become an official Olympic event someday. And the Olympic Virtual Series could be a preview of what that may look like.