3 × 3 basketball, tailor-made for a young and modern audience

“From the steppes to the Olympics! “ Among the five new disciplines incorporated into the Olympic barnum for the Tokyo Games, three-by-three (3 × 3) basketball could not find a better ambassador than Mongolia. Although its land area is immense, the Asian nation is a “small” country in terms of population. With three million inhabitants, it is hardly known for its performance in team sports. At the Olympic Games, its representatives have so far mainly shone in wrestling, boxing and judo.

However, when the turn of the Land of the Blue Skies comes to compete at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, Friday July 23, the Mongolian flag will be in the hands of a basketball player, Khulan Onolbaatar, the leader of his national 3 × 3 team. “We would never have imagined that a Mongolian ‘sport co’ team would one day participate in the Games”, raves Tugsjargal Sambuu, secretary general of the Mongolian 3 × 3 basketball federation, recalling that his country has not participated in the slightest final phase of an international competition of a team sport. “On Friday, a basketball player will be carrying our flag. It is a dream come true for Mongolia. And the reward for our work in basketball 3×3. “

“This is an example that we can show, validates a spokesperson for the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). That a country without basketball tradition performs [l’équipe masculine est passée à deux doigts de se qualifier] shows that this new discipline can allow basketball to develop everywhere. “ If the orange ball is thrown on all continents, not all players practice in a club; and not all countries have the infrastructure to develop sport at the highest level. Like other federations before it, FIBA ​​is trying to broaden the scope of its discipline, by injecting it with new blood.

A spectacular and offensive discipline

For 3 × 3 basketball, the accelerator was the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore, which the IOC envisioned as a “Ideas laboratory” for new disciplines, likely, in the long term, to enrich the Olympic Games, in a desire to renew its audience and stay in contact with young people. “Many federations have the same idea of ​​creating a short, urban, young and modern version of their discipline”, we tell FIBA. As for beach volleyball, Olympic since 1996 (and on display in 1992), or for rugby sevens (Olympic since the Rio Games).

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