But who says it has to be better? I don’t buy that argument. It certainly isn’t the case for basketball, soccer, cycling, triathlon, tennis, or boxing. And while the badminton or table tennis competition may be fun for North Americans and Europeans to watch once every four years, is it better than the World Championships held in South East Asia somewhere? Is the Field Hockey World Cup more prestigious than the Olympics, where rules say you have to have teams from the Americas and Africa participate and stink it up?
Don’t be too sure. Maybe all those images of Greece’s abandoned courts and stadiums is looming too large in my mind and that never happens anywhere else, but…
While I am not sure I buy it 100%, there is something to be said for the logic that if the Olympics are not the biggest event in your sport, your sport doesn’t belong in the Olympics. I guess that’s a way of saying the Olympics has added a lot of sports that are already popular and don’t need the Olympics but which might bring more money and TV viewers, which could be effective but makes the Olympics kind of bloated and less special. I enjoyed tennis at the London Olympics but it was at best the fifth most important event of the year, and possibly the sixth. It’s in no way different from tennis at any other event because tennis is already international. The doubles teams were different and seeing the top players in both singles and doubles was nice, but that was it. Olympic basketball is at least somewhat different, but only because at the top levels aren’t organized internationally.
Do a search on “TripleCast” to see how NBC feels about “PPV Olympics”.
Track & field had announcers. Most of the other events did not. IIRC, the only Judo matches that had them online, with the possible exceptions of the few that were on TV (because somebody from the USA was going for a medal), were the heavyweight finals, and even then, they sounded more like BBC commentators than NBC ones.
As for dropping wrestling, I’ve said this everywhere else, so I might as well mention it here…
I have a feeling the IOC wants to replace wrestling with either karate or wushu, probably because of one word - “Daniel-san”; somebody at the USOC probably thinks that the recent remake of The Karate Kid made them popular (you can explain wushu as “Chinese Karate”, since the remake takes place in China), but then there would be “too many” combat sports, so they have to get rid of one, but get rid of it in such a way that it looks like it was a “choice”.
See, Marley that’s the thing. This is the pinnacle of wrestling. This is what little kids can dream about with our sport.
Oh and there will be a major uproar over this. Petitions have already been started and sent to the White House. Every wrestling organization in wrestling is going to protest. People in this sport are very passionate.
If wrestling were being dropped for wushu, I think it would be because the sport is extremely popular in Asia, where lots of people live and some of its big sponsors do business. If the IOC were that interested in pleasing the US it wouldn’t have dropped baseball. To that end I saw one sportswriter saying yesterday that taekwondo isn’t on the chopping block because it’s very popular in South Korea, which is where Samsung, a big IOC sponsor, is based. It’s not because Will Smith put his kid in the movie. By the same token… yes, a Jr. Samaranch is a big modern pentathlon supporter and he’s also involved with Spain’s 2020 Olympic bid. Wrestling apparently isn’t a big deal in Spain and it is for the other two finalists (Turkey and Japan).
Note that this decision is not definite. The choice to drop wrestling was made by the IOC executive board. The full IOC votes in September.
I can’t speak to all of those, but I’d agree that soccer and tennis don’t belong in the Olympics any more than golf does. The function that the Olympics would serve for those sports is already fulfilled, better, by other events.
If they’re not naked and covered with olive oil, it ain’t wrestling!
Why can’t they lump all the martial arts together? So, Martial Arts: Taekwondo, Martial Arts: Wrestling, Martial Arts: Judo, etc.
They have different styles of swimming competing at different lengths. That’s fairly analogous to different styles of martial arts competing in different weight classes.
Speaking from outside the USA, I can’t see the fuss - wrestling seems like one of the prime candidates to be axed. It has minor popularity in some countries, though it is fractured in to several different codes, but in a lot of other countries it’s an extremely fringe sport. Field hockey and badminton (two sports mentioned earlier) may not be big sports in the US, but on a global scale they are more popular than wrestling.
Well if you look at the events in the ancient games, most of them were “martial arts.” The javelin throw, archery, etc. were all military skills.
As for combining sports, that’s always been done in athletics/track and field, where they lump together race walking with the marathon, 100 meter race, high jump, etc.
Though to be fair to wrestling there are sports who are much more worthy of being cut. Synchronized swimming or synchronized diving are two that spring to mind.
And the less said about taint wrestling, the better.
Wrestling is primal. Two people, no equipment, struggling against each other? How much more basic can you get? Maybe running is the most fundamental of all. But I’d say anything else should be cut before either of these.
I’m not a big fan of wrestling but I feel that its inclusion in the Olympics is a must, both for its history and “pureness” of the sport. I, for one, think they should simply add another sport without having to remove one. I love the Olympics and wish it was longer
I disagree. It appears that only a handful of nations compete in those sports, and only badminton is a national favorite.
Quite the opposite of wrestling where ariund 70 countries competed and 28 received medals. Also, wrestling has a rich and long history in many countries and as I mentioned for is the # 1 sport for a couple different countries.
I’d be more persuaded if that weren’t the IOC’s fault in the first place.
In Atlanta '96, there were 10 weights for men in each style. In Sydney 2000, they cut to 8 and 8, supposedly to make room for 7 weights for the women. Then, the IOC pulled the rug out from under them and cut the number of medals they were willing to award. The women compete in 7 weights at non-Olympic competitions.
This is obviously ridiculous, but if the change goes through then perhaps FILA will go back to promoting 8 or 10 weights internationally.
To add to the push back against badmouthing Badminton. In addition to being a very popular sport in SE Asia and China, it is also very widely played in India, and is generating something of a TV audience as well, now that our girl is ranked second or third in the world. Also , ‘Field Hockey’? Field Hockey IS Hockey you maroons. Ice Hockey is the derivative that gets played in far fewer countries.
Sigh. I suppose I shouldn’t be expecting much from a people that call holding an oval in your hands and running ‘Foot-ball’.