Pan American Games - Sports

Sports

According to Pan American Sports Organization rules all 28 current Olympic sports, plus other optional sports (such as bowling) that is popular throughout the Americas can be played at a single games.

The Pan American Games program consists of 36 sports, 40 disciplines and nearly 400 events. For example, Equestrian is a Pan American Games sport, comprising three disciplines: Dressage, Eventing and Show jumping. It is further broken down into six events for both men and women as a mixed gender competition. Athletics, swimming, fencing, diving, baseball, boxing, basketball, equestrian, football, artistic gymnastics, rowing, wrestling, shooting, tennis, weightlifting and water polo are the only summer sports that have never been absent from the Pan American Games program. Current Pan American Games sports, like rugby sevens, Handball, and volleyball, first appeared on the program at later editions of the games. Some sports that were featured in earlier Games were later dropped from the program.

Pan American Games sports are governed by international sports federations (IFs) recognized by PASO as the global supervisors of those sports. There are 36 federations represented at PASO. There are sports recognized by PASO that are not included on the Pan American Games program. These sports are not considered Pan American Games sports, but they can be promoted to this status during a program revision that occurs in the first PASO session following a celebration of the Pan American Games. During such revisions, sports can be excluded or included in the program on the basis of a two-thirds majority vote of the members of PASO. There are recognized sports that have never been on an Pan American Games program in any capacity, including chess and surfing. There are some sports that have been competed just once, such as Sambo which was only competed in 1983 in Caracas, Venezuela and Futsal which was only competed in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.