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No strip club necessary.
Pole-dancing now stands on its own as a provisionally recognized sport thanks to the Global Association of 🔑 International Sports Federation, which granted the activity's international governing federation "observer status" earlier this month.
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Choose your 🔑 plan ArrowRight "Pole Sports is a performance sport combining dance and acrobatics on a vertical pole," GAISF writes on its 🔑 website.
"Pole Sports requires great physical and mental exertion, strength and endurance are required to lift, hold and spin the body.
A 🔑 high degree of flexibility is needed to contort, pose, demonstrate lines and execute techniques."
Observer status is the first step international 🔑 federations must achieve before becoming full GAISF members, which serves as a great boost for any sport hoping to one 🔑 day land in the Olympics.
And that is exactly pole-dancing's goal, according to International Pole Sports Federation President Katie Coates, who 🔑 lauded the day the decision was made on Oct.2 as "historical."Advertisement
"The IPSF is very proud to have taken this positive 🔑 step towards official recognition and the GAISF Observer Status will give our sport the opportunity to develop further, on the 🔑 national and on the international stage," she said in a statement.
"In just eight years we have created a sport, ignited 🔑 a global following and inspired a new generation of sportsmen, [sports]women and children.
I am thankful to the IPSF and GAISF 🔑 teams and excited about the future of our sport."
The road to the Olympics isn't short, however.
Along with a recognized governing 🔑 body, prospective sports must also gain separate recognition from the International Olympic Committee.
Provisional IOC recognition lasts three years, during which 🔑 committee members decide whether to give it full recognition.
If successful, the sport's governing body still needs to then petition to 🔑 become an official Olympic sport, which can take several more years.
For Coates, however, those obstacles do not sound insurmountable, considering 🔑 the uphill battle she said she faced while campaigning to gain provisional recognition from the GAISF.
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"I feel like we have 🔑 achieved the impossible," she told the Telegraph this week.
"Everyone told us that we would not be able to get pole-dancing 🔑 recognized as a sport."
Today, pole-dancing competitions are as family-friendly as any sporting event - and just as well regulated.
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The IPSF outlines its rules, judging and other criteria in its 137-page document, that lays out guidelines for several 🔑 categories of competition, ranging from youth to mixed doubles to para-competition.
Pole dancers are even required to take doping tests to 🔑 ensure the sport is clean.
Watching a competition is akin to attending a dance recital of sorts, where the athletes, often 🔑 dressed in sparkly two-piece outfits or leotards, perform choreographed routines set to music on two 20-foot poles on a spotlighted 🔑 stage.
One pole rotates while the other is static, which allows athletes to perform different types of tricks as outlined in 🔑 the rule book.
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The IPSF even began holding its own world championships in 2012.
Russia's Anna Chigarina is the current women's champion.
"Pole-dancing 🔑 is not like everyone thinks it is," Coates said.
"You need to actually watch it to understand."
Six other international federations joined 🔑 pole-dancing in gaining provisional recognition from the GAISF this month.
They include some other eyebrow-raising activities, including arm-wrestling, dodgeball, poker and 🔑 kettlebell lifting, as well as FootGolf, a sport that combines soccer and golf, and table soccer, which is better known 🔑 as foosball.
"We warmly welcome our first Observers," GAISF President Patrick Baumann said in a statement.
"This is an exciting time for 🔑 them and for us and we will do everything within our remit to help them realize their full potential as 🔑 International Federations within the global sport's family and, one day, maybe become part of the Olympic program."Read more:
