Sports

Officially, there are 28 medal sports on the Olympic Program for the 2008 Beijing Games, with 20 associated disciplines. NBCOlympics.com considers certain "disciplines" to be "sports," such as diving and swimming (instead of combining them under Aquatics as the IOC does), and thus presents a total of 34 medal sports, the same as in 2000 and 2004.

Within the 34 sports are 302 medal events. Of those, 165 are open to men, 127 to women and 10 to both genders. The three sports featuring events for both men and women are badminton (mixed doubles), equestrian and sailing.

Officially, nine events have been added to the program since 2004, while eight have been subtracted.  The new events are:

• Swimming (2): Men's and women's open-water
• Cycling (2): Men's and women's BMX racing
• Fencing (2): Women's team sabre, women's team foil
• Table tennis (2): Men's and women's team competitions
• Track & Field (1): Women's steeplechase

After the Beijing Games, two sports -- softball and baseball -- will be removed from the summer program. They will not be contested at the 2012 London Games but can be reinstated for 2016 when the IOC votes on program changes in 2009.