Tuesday, 24 July 2018:

One of Australia's youngest Olympic aspirants for 2020 will have her first taste of international competition next month.

14-year-old Angie Scarth-Johnson is among those aspiring to grab the one female spot allocated to the Oceania region for the new event of sport climbing.

The 155cm teenager from the Blue Mountains in NSW has already set several climbing landmarks, despite being still too young to compete at open level.

She will get her first experience of international competition at next month's youth world championships in Moscow, and will just have reached the minimum age of 16 by the time the Olympics rolls around.

Sport climbing in Tokyo will combine three different disciplines in the one event, speed, elite and bouldering.

"It's very hard because a lot of climbers are either good at one or two, I don't know anyone who's good at all three," Scarth-Johnson said.

The disciplines call for different attributes, according to Australia's leading overall male sports climber Ben Abel.

"It's like a sprinter running a sprint race and then running a marathon straight after that and then doing swimming after that," Abel said.

In skateboarding, another new sport, Australia can qualify a maximum of three male and female competitors for Tokyo.

"'America and Brazil are very strong as well but we have very good competitors in Australia," female skateboarder Amar Hadid said.

'Winning a medal as an Australian, we have every possibility."

That would no doubt silence some of those who have questioned skateboarding's presence in the Olympics.

"Not many people thought of it as a sport, they thought of it more as an activity or a hobby, but now it's in the Olympics it reinforces it is indeed a sport," Hadid said.

"We need to get behind the Australians who can compete in the Olympics as skateboarders.

"They deserve the respect just like any other athlete that competes in any other sport."

Chef de mission Ian Chesterman said Australia was looking to take a team of around 470 athletes to Tokyo.

They will contest an Olympic record 33 sports and 339 events, with surfing and karate the other new sports added to the schedule.

AAP