Let me fill in some background information for all of you who don’t follow amateur wrestling.
In the Olympics, there are two styles of wrestling - freestyle, in which you may attack the whole body, and Greco-Roman, which prohibits the use of holds that involve the legs directly. Basically, you can’t trip your opponent or grab his legs in Greco. In the United States, freestyle is by far more popular because it’s closer to the style we wrestle predominantly in high school and college; however, we’re the only nation in the world that wrestles this style. Only a few dedicated, mildly insane people prefer to specialize in Greco. (I’m a Greco nut, personally.) However, the rest of the world predominantly prefers Greco.
The 1996 Olympics featured competition in men’s freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling in ten weight classes each, with the weights ranging from 105 to 286 pounds. This truly allowed men of all sizes to compete, and it allowed Korea to be a world powerhouse due to their domination of the 105, 114.5 and 118-pound weight classes. (I know it sounds like a stereotype, but it’s true.)
With the understanding that women’s wrestling would be worked into the Sydney games, FILA (the international governing body of wrestling) cut the men’s competition to eight weight classes - 54, 58, 63, 69, 76, 85, 97 and 130 kilos, or roughly 119, 127, 139, 152, 165, 187, 213 and 286 pounds. This eliminated many competitors from wrestling, including USA Wrestling’s beloved Rob Eiter, who competed at 105 pounds. Still, it was seen as “taking one for the team” so that the six women’s weight classes could be added. (Women compete only in freestyle for reasons that aren’t clear to anyone in the States.)
Sydney came and went.
Finally, we’ve managed to talk the IOC into adding wrestling to the Athens games in 2004 - with a total of 18 gold medals to be awarded. The IOC has decreed that there will be 4 women’s weights and 7 weights for the men in each of the two styles, all because they don’t want to add any more athletes to the games. They capped participation at 320 wrestlers, and that’s that.
Now, REALLY. We’ve already lost two weight classes in the past 5 years for the sole purpose of bringing the women to the Olympics, which is a place that they as world-class athletes deserve to be. It’s unfair to penalize the men by spreading the weights out even further just so that the women can get something they should have had in the first place.
The other option, sadly, is to cut Greco, go to 10 weight classes for men’s freestyle and 8 for women’s. For obvious reasons, I think this is a horrible idea.
Sorry about the long, confusing post. It just makes me really mad that the IOC is so wrapped up in the costs of running the even that they want to cut weight classes from each of the wrestling competitions, and yet will only cut one weight class from boxing, which is, I believe, the only all-male sport left in the games.