Boules launches 2024 Olympic campaign

Boules launched their bid to get onto the Olympic Programme for the 2024 Games ©ITG

The sport of boules has launched a campaign to get onto the Olympic programme in 2024.

Announcing the move with the help of a slick video at SPORTEL in Monaco, Claude Azéma, President of the Confédération Mondiale Sport Boules (CMSB), argued that the sport was in line with the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Agenda 2020 reform programme since it was clean, inexpensive and widely known.

However, he acknowledged that the campaign had “an ambitious objective”.

One of the issues potentially confronting boules - and other sports - in their ambitions is that the full mechanism via which new sports might accede to the Olympics at those 2024 Games seems less than crystal clear at present, in part owing to the reformist mindset fostered by Agenda 2020.

It could be that the sport’s best chance of making it onto the Games programme will be to be picked as an additional sport by the eventual 2024 host.

One could imagine that boules would be relatively well-placed to achieve this in the event of a victory by Paris or Rome, perhaps less so should Budapest, Hamburg or Los Angeles emerge victorious.

Tokyo 2020 recently proposed five sports for inclusion at the Japanese capital’s second Olympics in five years’ time.

Confédération Mondiale Sport Boules President Claude Azéma (left) admitted it was an "ambitious challenge" to get the sport on the Olympic Programme for 2024 ©Boules Sport 2024/Facebook

The sport of bowling was, however, one of three that did not make it onto this list.

Boules went to great efforts, nonetheless, to trumpet its global credentials at Monday’s presentation, saying it was played by at least 200 million people in 165 countries and all five continents.

As part of the sport’s Olympic efforts, the campaign is to embark next year on a global tour of cities, beginning with Bangkok and also embracing Tokyo, Beijing, London, Paris, Monaco, Los Angeles and Rome.

While the CMSB formally covers three versions of the game - pétanque, boule Lyonnais and raffa - it is understood that the body maintains contact with representatives of lawn bowls, an activity regularly included at the Commonwealth Games.

Questioned directly on whether his body’s initiative could conceivably lead to lawn bowls being practiced at the 2024 Olympics, Azéma indicated that this was part of the objective.

While the sport was not rich, Azéma claimed, “the millions that we do not have in euros we have in supporters”.

The video, available below, sought, with some success, to portray the sport as both youth-oriented and inclusive, and featured the slogan “Entering the Olympic family".