2008 Olympic Games

Baseball at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing will be held over an eleven day period starting August 13 and concluding with the medal finals on August 23. All games will be played at Wukesong Baseball Field, a temporary venue constructed at the Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center. Olympic baseball is competed by men only, women compete in the similar sport of softball.

The International Olympic Committee has voted to remove baseball from the program for the 2012 Olympic Games, so this is the last time that baseball will be contested at the Olympics unless it is reinstated at a future date.

Eight teams will compete in the Olympic baseball tournament, and the competition consists of two rounds. The preliminary round follows a round robin format, where each of the teams plays all the other teams once. Following this, the top four teams advance to a single elimination round culminating in the bronze and gold medal games.

The events programme for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events), one more event in total than in Athens.The following are the sports to be contested at the games (The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses):

• Aquatics (46)
• Archery (4)
• Athletics (47)
• Badminton (5)
• Baseball (1)
• Basketball (2)
• Boxing (11)
• Canoe / kayak (16)
• Cycling (18)
• Equestrian (6)
• Fencing (10)
• Football/Soccer (2)
• Gymnastics (18)
• Handball (2)
• Hockey (2)
• Judo (14)
• Modern pentathlon (2)
• Rowing (14)
• Sailing (11)
• Shooting (15)
• Softball (1)
• Table tennis (4)
• Taekwondo (8)
• Tennis (4)
• Triathlon (2)
• Volleyball (4)
• Weightlifting (15)
• Wrestling (18)