While the International Olympic Committee was preparing to reveal the sports being added to the program for the Tokyo Games during the 129th IOC session in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016, a pro softball team in the United States was on a plane preparing for takeoff.
The players followed a livestream of the session as best they could while their plane prepared to depart. When the flight attendants weren’t looking, they surreptitiously sneaked peeks at their phones, which by then were supposed to have been put away. Eventually the news they were waiting for arrived — softball was back in the Olympics and on the program for Tokyo 2020.
"Literally as we were taking off, they announced that we were making it in," Monica Abbott, a star pitcher for the U.S. national squad who was with the pro team on that flight, told The Japan Times. "The whole team was cheering and hollering and all of it. It was really exciting."
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