I honestly would have bet that Wrestling would have been the very last event cut.
It dates back to the ancient games.
It was a founding sport of the Modern Olympics.
It fits the “spirit of competetion” well in that a guy , his dad, with a room and a rug, could theoretically learn everything he needs to compete in the olympics.
It is worldwide, and possible in any country with little special equipment.
For some medium and smaller countries it is the only way the medal currently.
It is a big sport in one of the big dogs, Russia, and bigger than most Olympics sports in another one, the U.S.
While agree with you points wolfman I think the IOC’s criteria are something like:
- Attractiveness to corporate sponsors
.
.
.
. - Attractiveness to TV audiences
- Everything else.
Any chance the IOC will reconsider this decision? Or is wrestling screwed?
AIUI, it is now in the group of potential replacement sports. So if it beats out the contenders (ie. wins the losers bracket) then it’s back in and nothing changes. … AIUI.
I think I heard about this and should have taken advantage of it. As usual, I’m running about a decade behind technologically and might be caught up by the 2020 games or so.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was a scam to avoid considering new sports. Cut an un-cuttable sport, wait for the global outcry, announce your reconsideration, and reinstate it as the “new” sport, short-circuiting the real new sport possibility.
Of course my conspiracy theory will be shot to hell if they don’t reinstate.
Well pentathlon has friends in high places.
I’m a former wrestler and follow the sport closely, so this is quite upsetting to me.
A lot of things have already been mentioned. But one point I’d emphasize, is that places like Russia, Iran, Azerbijan, wrestling is their sport. It’s what football is to the U.S. and other places like Japan and India are (or were) becoming popular very quickly. Also, I’m pretty sure that over 30 countries earned a medal in wrestling in the last games.
It’s true this is a sport that anyone can learn too with minimal equipment. In India, a wrestler captured one of very few medals for the country. The guy who picked up the silver medal, when he first started wrestling, was said to have dug up the dirt to make it soft before practicing.
I get that a lot of people find it boring or they just don’t understand it. There’s a lot of matches that I find boring. But to eliminate it from the Olympics is just wrong. Wrestling has been getting more popular here and a big draw is being able to tell a kid that he/she could be an Olympic champ one day. That is a great thing for people. Studies have shown that individual sports are a huge boost to self-esteem. I can personally attest to that.
I could go on and on about the merits of wrestling. The IOC is making one fucked up decision here. There’s only 15 members on that board. Somebody’s getting paid off.
Especially gauling since a lot of the proposed replacements, like wakeboarding, are the opposite of accesible.
I don’t like wrestling. I find it pointless and tedious in the extreme but I don’t find that a reason for getting rid of it.
There are plenty of others that should be further up the queue for a cull and the criteria seems obvious to me.
Are the Olympics the top award in that sport? Wrestling yes, badminton? yes…tennis? no!
Can you create an objective scoring system? wrestling and boxing? sort of yes, 100m? yes, Showjumping? yes, synchronised swimming? no, diving? no, dressage? no, gymnastics? no,
I reckon that no sport should be allowed in unless it can meet those criteria and there should be a cull of existing olympic sports along those same lines.
Keep wrestling, squash and rugby sevens are good additions. I’d be open to baseball/softball and even more so to 20:20 cricket seeing as it hasn’t really established a world championship of any real importance yet. Introducing golf is just ridiculous, same with wakeboarding.
I think I am with the majority on this - I don’t see why wrestling, of all the sports that they were looking at, is the one to come off the board. I’d keep it for many of the reasons others have expanded on.
Couple of other things though:
-
Badminton: it’s one of the biggest sports in South East Asia, including in China and Indonesia - two of the largest countries on earth - as well as popular in central and northern Europe. Plus the Olympics is the most prestigious title. People who are claiming it doesn’t belong either don’t know enough about the sport or are applying one standard to Wrestling and another to Badminton. Quite a few of the arguments for Wrestling apply equally for Badminton.
-
Rugby 7s: Rugby actually disbanded the 7s World Championship so that the Olympics is the top tier tournament for that version of the sport. It’s also massively more open for upsets and smaller nations managing to win medals (at the recent 7s tournament in Las Vegas - the US were one match away from what would have guaranteed them a shot at bronze in the Olympics) and sides like Fiji and Samoa regularly feature in the final stages. Add in that England, Wales and Scotland will have to form one team, the tournament will be much more open, especially as inclusion in the Olympics has resulted in funding being given to 7s in non-traditional rugby nations - we’re even starting to see some of that in the 7s tournametns currently being played - Portugal have managed to beat some traditional powers this year, for example. Finally, the game is markedly different from 15s with the athletes in one form increasingly specialising in that form with little crossover. It shouldn’t be thought of as admitting rugby, it’s admitting 7s.
-
As an addendum to the above, I am open to the team sports where it is at least a kind of pinnacle for the game. Winning Olympic Gold in Basketball is the pinnacle for national competition - even if almost every player would prefer an NBA title. Equally, if baseball were allowed back in, Olympic Gold would not be a World Series but it would be better than winning the national team championships. This is why football should be removed.
-
Boxing could probably do with removal but not because the pinnacle of the sport is the pro ranks (I’d consider amateur and pro-boxing essentially two different sports - where one is about scoring points and the other is about beating the other bloke up). It’s because it is corrupt as fuck. All the judging scandals are a disgrace. Sure you can win an Olympic bout by knock out - but more often it will be judged and the judges have proven to be totally unreliable. It needs dropping if only for the sport to get its house in order, as far as I am concerned.
Yes I think we are pretty much aligned but I’d be very sad to see Olympic boxing go as I think it can provide a fantastic spectacle if managed properly.
But…and it is a Jan Molby size but…The scoring needs to be far more trustworthy.
Apparently the scoring system is to be overhauled for Rio 2016. Professional scoring methods (10 for winning a round, 9 or less for losing) headgear removed and, more surprisingly, pro boxers allowed to compete.
I’m not sure about this. I don’t know that any of that will address the issues. though it may be impolitic to say it, judge corruption is probably the biggest spectre and certain countries may be more susceptible to it. I’d like to see a small cadre of professional referees with impeccable credentials, even if that means derailing the Olympic gravy train for some.
Let’s see how it fares under the new rules in 2016 but I do get the impression that it is living on borrowed time, that would be a pity.
How can you have a “Ten Point Must” judging system for three round fights? 10-9 rounds are generally draws that someone has to be credited with winning, so a 10-9, 8-10, 10-9 fight, which should go to the fighter that won round 2, will be scored a draw. That’s no better than the current system.
What’s wrong with golf? It is a pure competition with no judging, other than rules violations that rarely come into play, there is no judging or subjective scoring, and players from every populated continent have won the top events in the last decade.
High-level golf has a much greater facilities requirement than practically any other sport. True championship courses take years to mature. By including golf, you are essentially boxing out a number of Olympic host cities that would otherwise be excellent.
Contrast this with wrestling. You need a mat and a scorer’s table.
I agree. It has become impossible to conduct fair boxing matches under the Olympic system. Better to drop it altogether than continue the fraud.
I don’t care about wrestling one way or the other, but every time I think I’ve grasped the incompetence and corruption of the Olympics, they do something like this.
Any city in post-Soviet era considered for hosting the Games already has a suiutable course in place. Even if a city like Tehran were chosen, a course could be built from scratch in three years for around $10M, less than a velodrome would cost, and it wouldn’t be abandoned after the games.
It’s easier to build a course on barren land than it is to carve one out of a wooded landscape, both in terms of construction logistics and “growing in” the turfgrass.
That’s just it. There is an established array of top-level golf tournaments, with large fields of international talent, acclaimed courses,* and great media and fan interest. There’s no way an Olympic golf tournament is going to be better in these respects, so what’s the point?
- Yes, cities that would host the Summer Games either have or could build courses, but they’re unlikely to be as good as the ones the top events are already played on.
To be fair, the ancient Greeks have been weeping ever since we made the wrestlers put pants on.