Olympic Games
The Olympic Games programme consists of 35 sports, 30 disciplines and 408 events. For example, wrestling is a Summer Olympic sport, comprising two disciplines: Greco-Roman and Freestyle. It is further broken down into fourteen events for men and four events for women, each representing a different weight class. The Summer Olympics programme includes 26 sports, while the Winter Olympics programme features 15 sports. Athletics, swimming, fencing, and artistic gymnastics are the only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic programme. Cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and speed skating have been featured at every Winter Olympics programme since its inception in 1924. Current Olympic sports, like badminton, basketball, and volleyball, first appeared on the programme as demonstration sports, and were later promoted to full Olympic sports. Some sports that were featured in earlier Games were later dropped from the programme.
Bay State Games
The Summer Games is Massachusetts' own Olympic-style athletic competition that has been held since 1982 and features more than 7,000 athletes in 26 sports. Athletes represent over 300 Massachusetts communities, and participants range in age from 6 to 86. The Bay States Games reached it popularity in the 1990s when the number of participants increased to over 10,000 athletes. Over the years, the Bay State Games has expanded and focused more on individual sports such as swimming and track and field. The Bay State Games consists of competitions with archery, baseball, basketball, diving, fencing, field hockey, ice hockey, junior basketball, soccer, softball, tennis, volleyball, wrestling, 6v6 field hockey, and 7v7 soccer. Also, lacrosse has been one of the Games’ fastest growing sports. Master divisions were created and recreational sports such as baton twirling, judo, table tennis, and badminton. The Summer Games span is six to seven weeks in June and July. Tryouts for the Summer Games are held throughout the month of June, with finals taking place in the Metro-Boston and central Massachusetts area in mid-July.