It’s pretty halfhearted badmouthing since nobody even mentioned that incident in the last Olympics where a bunch of teams were trying to lose on purpose.
It’s a shame, but out of all the sports we’re comparing to be eliminated, wrestling just had the weakest hold.
[half-Nelson/] Ha [/half-Nelson]
Well of course it’s football. You don’t see anyone playing it on horseback do you?
China was trying to lose on purpose, and other teams were following their lead because otherwise it gave China an unfair advantage. A team/individual is trying to bend rules to try and get ahead. Which sport has that not happened in? This is tame by comparison to most others in fact.
I don’t really think badminton should be dropped because of that incident or that it needs to be dropped at all. But the match throwing was a total embarrassment on every level, so it’s kind of funny to see the Olympics get rid of other sports and talk about the importance of anti-corruption practices in its deliberation process. Oh, and last month the IOC stripped the 2000 Olympic cycling gold medalist of his medal because of his world famous doping program. That sport also isn’t going anywhere.
It should be noted the IOC is backpedaling on the wrestling decision, now saying “uhhh, no, we aren’t actually totally committed to getting rid of it, it was a vote to maybe decide later to get rid of it…”
Thank you for the information on the number of participants.
Here is a medal table (the German and Italian medal counts are incomplete):
All Time Medal Count for Wrestling
57 countries have won at least one medal, and 39 have won at least one gold.
That ought establish wrestling’s credentials for cosmopolitanism beyond doubt.
And as far as overall athletic ability wrestlers may be second to none. Golfers,
on the hand hand, might be the least athletic of all participants if they make the field.
Being from one of the olympic jurisdictions that medalled in Wrestling – a surprise silver (making that a whole half, and the highest, of our count) from a humble immigrant guy who trained in an neighborhood gym in a lower-middle-class neighborhood – this was quite annoying news.
It all sums up in that it doesn’t produce big wheelbarrows of dollars/euros for IOC from product-placing-sponsors.
BTW, on baseball, the World Baseball Classic (Wikipedia article)is by now in its third edition as the MLB-sponsored attempt at setting up a true quadriennial “World” Tournament. IF if they are ever able to consistently enable the good top players from the respective leagues/countries to show up, they could have an international championship title worthy of skipping the Olympics.
The WBC is awesome. Even with some top players declining the opportunity, it is already higher-caliber baseball than most Olympic competition was. (The Cuban team in the Olympics was always great, but only occasionally faced serious competition.)
Baseball is an Olympic sport? Really? Now there’s something that ought to be cut. How many countries play it? Two?
Baseball is not a current Olympic sport. It was a medal event from 1992 through 2008, and a demonstration sport a few times before that. It and softball were dropped after Beijing.
The Olympic tournament was eight teams, but it can be considered a leading sport in about a dozen countries, with maybe twice that many active enough to compete internationally. By those measures it is certainly the equal of many Olympic events.
The WBC happens every third year, and interest in it is pretty mediocre. A lot of fans consider it a weird interruption of spring training.
I for one would much prefer MLB simply suspend the season for a couple of weeks and let the ballplayers go tothe Olympics. Like the NHL used to do, just skip the All Star game that year. The only disadvantage would be that the Summer Games don’t always line up great with the middle of the baseball season - the 2016 Games happen in August - but meh, you can work around that. Cut 10 games out of the schedule, tighten it up a little bit, and let MB be part of the Olympics. Speaking as both a big baseball and hockey fan, I am FAR more fond of the NHL’s defense to the Olympics than I am of baseball’s defense to nothing except how much money they’re gonna make tomorrow.
Seriously?
Baseball’s rather popular throughout the Americas and you might have heard it’s got a rather large following in Asia.
It was cut.
The WBC is every fourth year, in springs following Summer Games; only the first interval was three years.
American interest may be mediocre, considering how great it actually is, but Americans are not the only baseball fans. Asian and Latin interest has been pretty strong.
It occurs during MLB spring training, which of course is only relevant for some players and fans. Not really an interruption, more like an alternate track (and the games are vastly better than ST games, to be honest). The national teams whose first-round games are in North America usually play exhibitions against MLB teams at ST facilities.
Look, I’m a huge baseball fan, especially international ball; for myself, I’d be delighted to see baseball in the Olympics again. But there’s no realistic way that Olympic baseball is going to be better than the WBC.
Didn’t NBC try something similar to that with the infamous “Olympic Triplecast” that bombed so badly that they wound up with the crappy coverage everyone hates ever since? EDIT:sorry didn’t see it was already brought up
And holy crap, taking wrestling out of the olympics, that’s so stupid it should be criminal.
If there is no wrestling it is just a big sporting event, not the Olympics.
Tedious? Yes. Pointless? Not so much.
But, come on. How you gonna cut this?
Not, to toot my own horn or anything but I’ve grown up and wrestled a couple of those guys in the video, too. Whatever, toot-toot!
The president of FILA (the governing body of wrestling worldwide) resigned the other day, basically in response to the IOC decision.