The Pan American Games sports comprise all the sports contested in the

Summer Olympic Games The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inau ...

. In addition, traditional and popular sports throughout the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

which are not contested at the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

are also contested such as

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

. As of 2015, the Pan American Games included 36 sports with 51 disciplines and 364 events. The number and kinds of events may change slightly from one

Pan American Games The Pan American Games (also known colloquially as the Pan Am Games) is a continental multi-sport event in the Americas featuring summer sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The competition is held ...

to another.

Sports, disciplines, events

For purposes of Pan American Games competition, the

Pan American Sports Organization The Panam Sports (Formerly Pan American Sports Organization; es, link=no, Organización Deportiva Panamericana; pt, link=no, Organizacão Depórtiva Panamericana; french: Organisation Sportive PanAméricaine) is an international organization whi ...

(PASO) makes a distinction between sports and disciplines. A sport, in Pan American Games terms, is a single or group of disciplines as represented by an international governing body, namely an

International Federation This is a list of international sports federations, each of which serves as a non-governmental governing body for a given sport and administers its sport at a world level, most often crafting rules, promoting the sport to prospective spectator ...

. For example,

aquatics Aquatics may refer to: *Aquatic sports in the Olympics and other international competitions, including the disciplines of swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo, and open water swimming *Water-related sports more broadly (including boa ...

, represented at the Olympic level by the

International Swimming Federation FINA (french: Fédération internationale de natation, en, International Swimming Federation, link=yes) (to be renamed as World Aquatics by ) is the international federation recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administer ...

, is a sport at the

that includes the

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

diving Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), a ...

synchronized swimming Synchronized swimming (in British English, synchronised swimming) or artistic swimming is a sport where swimmers perform a synchronized choreographed routine, accompanied by music. The sport is governed internationally by FINA (the ''Fédérati ...

and

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...

disciplines. Every Summer Olympic discipline is currently on the Pan American Games program. The last such discipline to be added was canoe slalom, which made its debut in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Canada. The discipline had been scheduled to be held at both the

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

and

2011 Pan American Games The 2011 Pan American Games, officially the XVI Pan American Games, was an international multi-sport event that was held from October 14–30, 2011, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Some events were held in the nearby cities of Ciudad Guzmán, ...

, but had been dropped both times due to the small number of competing countries.Pan American Canoe Slalom Championships - 2011 ICF Ranking Event
/ref> The Games also include some disciplines which have never been contested at a Summer Olympics. Examples can be found in baseball and softball, now considered a single Pan Am Games sport due to sharing a single international federation. Both were last contested in the Olympics in 2008 and will return in 2020, but baseball has been strictly for men and softball for women. In the Pan Am Games, men's softball has been on the program on several occasions, most recently in 2015; women's baseball made its debut in 2015. Medals are awarded on a per-event basis; there can be one or more events per sport or discipline. In fact, every current Pan American Games discipline has at least two events.

Changes

The Pan American Games charter establishes that they comprise the program of the Games, the 28 compulsory sports of the program of the Olympic Games plus seven sports recognized by the entity, due to its popularity in the American continent, if a new sport becomes Olympic it is automatically added to the program of the Pan American Games. This only happens, if the number of national federations in the Americas is sufficient. In the same way that it happens in the

Universiade The Universiade is an international multi-sport event, organized for university athletes by the International University Sports Federation (FISU). The name is a portmanteau of the words "University" and "Olympiad". The Universiade is referred t ...

, the Organizing Committee of the each edition can request the inclusion of new sports or disciplines, respecting the local demands. An example of this is the removal of the Basque pelota in the program of the Games of

and

and its replacement respectively by futsal. and the woman's baseball tournament. Until the 2011 Games in

Guadalajara Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the list of states of Mexico, state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Me ...

, just one olympic event was never held, the canoe slalom. The event was planned to be held in the 2007 and 2011 editions, but was eventually canceled due to the low number of entries. Thus, the event was held for the first time at the 2015 Games. Previous Pan American Games have included sports which are no longer present on the current program, like

futsal Futsal is a football-based game played on a hardcourt, hard court smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It has similarities to five-a-side football and Indoor soccer, indoor football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players ...

and

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

. The International Olympic Committee voted on October 9, 2009, during the

121st IOC Session The 121st International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session was held on October 1–9, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, during which Rio de Janeiro was selected as the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The city of Copenhagen was chosen on February ...

in Copenhagen, to elevate both rugby sevens and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

as official Olympic sports and to include them in the Olympics, beginning with the

2016 Olympic Games ) , nations = 207 (including IOA and EOR teams) , athletes = 11,238 , events = 306 in 28 sports (41 disciplines) , opening = 5 August 2016 , closing = 21 August 2016 , opened_by = Vice President Michel Temer , cauldron = Vanderlei Cordeiro d ...

. With this development, rugby sevens made its debut at the

in Guadalajara, and golf was played at the

2015 Pan American Games Fifteen or 15 may refer to: *15 (number), the natural number following 14 and preceding 16 *one of the years 15 BC, AD 15, 1915, 2015 Music *Fifteen (band), a punk rock band Albums * ''15'' (Buckcherry album), 2005 * ''15'' (Ani Lorak alb ...

before becoming an Olympic sport. In 2015, as a result of a request from the organizing committee, PASO decided to include surfing in the

2019 Pan American Games The 2019 Pan American Games ( es, Juegos Panamericanos de 2019, links=no), officially the XVIII Pan American Games and commonly known as the Lima 2019 Pan-Am Games or Lima 2019 ( qu, Limaq 2019), were a multi-sport event governed by the Panam Spo ...

program. The following year, a few days before the opening ceremony of the

2016 Summer Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics ( pt, Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ( pt, Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 20 ...

, surfing was integrated to the

2020 Summer Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the ...

program.

Current Pan American Games program

The following sports (or disciplines of a sport) make up the current Pan American Games official program and are listed alphabetically according to the name used by PASO. The figures in each cell indicate the number of events for each sport contested at the respective Games; a

bullet A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and co ...

() denotes that the sport/discipline was scheduled to be competed, but was dropped due to a lack of entries. Nine of the 36 sports (Aquatics, Basketball, Canoeing, Cycling, Football, Gymnastics, Volleyball, Equestrian and Wrestling) consist of multiple disciplines. Disciplines from the same sport are grouped under the same heading: For equestrian and wrestling, the figures in each cell indicate the number of events for each sport, and not for each discipline separately. Multiple new sports and events were added to the next edition of the games in 2019. The new sports are bodybuilding and surfing. The following sports have been contested at the

:Pan American Games events

Discontinued sports

The following sports were previously part of the Pan American Games program as official sports, but are no longer on the current program.

Winter sports

References