Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

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Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby JITW » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:15 am

Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/201 ... mpics.html

Rob Eiter was shocked when he heard the news.

International Olympic Committee leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday in a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games.

"It literally came from left field," said Eiter, a former U.S. Olympic wrestler and the fifth-year head wrestling coach at Penn. "It still hasn't really sunk in, to be honest."

The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon - the event considered most at risk - and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 "core sports."

The IOC board acted after reviewing the 26 sports on the current Olympic program. Eliminating one sport allows the IOC to add a sport to the program later this year.

"It would be a travesty," said Ryan McCormick, wrestling coach at Camden Catholic High School. "Wrestling has been in the Olympics for over a century. Many young men and women strive to be an Olympic wrestler and hope maybe they can one day represent their country. It will only hurt the sport and force more wrestlers into [mixed martial arts].

"Wrestling is such a true sport, the self-discipline and dedication it takes, the price your body and mind pay. Yet at the end, not one wrestler does it for money or fame."

Jordan Burroughs, a gold medalist in the 2012 London Games, said on his Facebook page that the wrestling community should fight back.

"As an Olympic Gold Medalist I feel an obligation to fight for the sport that I love most," wrote Burroughs, who is from Sicklerville, N.J. "I wouldn't be who I am if I allowed this to end without a fight. We have to rally. It may be out of our reach, but trying never hurt."

Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in 1896 in Athens.

Camden Catholic senior TJ Miller, a former New Jersey state champion, called the move an international tragedy.

"In the United States, we have college wrestling to fall back on," Miller said. "Other countries are hurt more . . . because [Olympic wrestling] is what they live for. That hurts the sport as a whole."

IOC spokesman Mark Adams said the organization has nothing against wrestling.

"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," he said. "In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling, it is what's right with the 25 core sports."

Adams said the decision was made by secret ballot over several rounds, with members voting each time on which sport should not be included in the core group. The figures were not disclosed. IOC president Jacques Rogge did not vote.

Wrestling featured 344 athletes competing in 11 medal events in freestyle and seven in Greco-Roman at last year's London Olympics. Women's wrestling was added to the Olympics for the 2004 Athens Games.

Americans have won a record 113 freestyle Olympic medals, by far the most of any nation. Though the United States had slipped in recent Olympic cycles, it bounced back with a pair of London Games gold medalists in Burroughs - possibly the best wrestler in the world - and Jake Varner.

Vic Stanley, the coach at Archbishop Wood High School, has been coaching the sport for 46 years.

"The IOC, in my opinion, is driven by the money," Stanley said. "They're going with the sports that are going to get the largest advertising revenue. That's why golf was added. They're following the money."

Said Council Rock South coach Brad Silimperi: "How can they eliminate the oldest sport in the world, one of the original sports contested at the first Olympic Games, not to mention one that the entire world competes in? What's next, the marathon going by the wayside?"

Wrestling will join seven other sports in applying for inclusion in 2020. The others are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding, and wushu (martial arts). They will be vying for a single opening in 2020.

The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be conducted at the IOC general assembly in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It is unlikely that wrestling will be voted back in so soon after being removed by the executive board.

The last sports removed from the Olympics were baseball and softball, voted out by the IOC in 2005 and off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games. Golf and rugby will join the program in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Eiter was an alternate on the 1992 U.S. Olympic team and a 105-pounder in 1996 at the Atlanta Games, in which he finished eighth.

"To walk out there and show your pride and give your all," he said, "it was special."
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby JITW » Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:15 am

WTF????



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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby coldharvest » Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:11 am

The Olympic committee are such a shame to sports.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby JITW » Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:00 pm

It's all about the advertising dollars


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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby Freyja » Wed Feb 13, 2013 1:12 pm

coldharvest wrote:The Olympic committee are such a shame to sports.


Exactly. Why would they do this? As it said in the article, it's one of the oldest Olympic sports. That's like editing a holiday out of the calender. It's a tradition.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby coldharvest » Wed Feb 13, 2013 1:43 pm

Freyja wrote:
coldharvest wrote:The Olympic committee are such a shame to sports.


Exactly. Why would they do this? As it said in the article, it's one of the oldest Olympic sports. That's like editing a holiday out of the calender. It's a tradition.

The Olympics is about money and showing the Third World where it's place is.
Why do London, Beijing etc get new stadiums, roads and other assorted bits of infrastructure in the name of international sport when Chechnya and Botswana need that shit more?
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby Freyja » Wed Feb 13, 2013 1:58 pm

coldharvest wrote:
Freyja wrote:
coldharvest wrote:The Olympic committee are such a shame to sports.


Exactly. Why would they do this? As it said in the article, it's one of the oldest Olympic sports. That's like editing a holiday out of the calender. It's a tradition.

The Olympics is about money and showing the Third World where it's place is.
Why do London, Beijing etc get new stadiums, roads and other assorted bits of infrastructure in the name of international sport when Chechnya and Botswana need that shit more?


I've never really thought about it in that way. They should build stadiums and etc in places like that, it could potentially help their economy greatly, if they hosted the Olympics or some other major sporting event.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby St John Smythe » Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:53 pm

Men writhing around on the floor together in tight clothes. Jolly homoerotic, what what?
And chaps wonder why the IOC drops it?
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby LechoZX » Tue Jun 18, 2013 9:31 pm

Freyja wrote:
coldharvest wrote:
Freyja wrote:
coldharvest wrote:The Olympic committee are such a shame to sports.


Exactly. Why would they do this? As it said in the article, it's one of the oldest Olympic sports. That's like editing a holiday out of the calender. It's a tradition.

The Olympics is about money and showing the Third World where it's place is.
Why do London, Beijing etc get new stadiums, roads and other assorted bits of infrastructure in the name of international sport when Chechnya and Botswana need that shit more?


I've never really thought about it in that way. They should build stadiums and etc in places like that, it could potentially help their economy greatly, if they hosted the Olympics or some other major sporting event.


The only cities that seem to actually benefit from the Olympics are developing ones that do need the infrastructure. Athens and others go broke spending a shitload on things they don't need while the sucess stories seem to have been ones like Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Mexico City 1968.

NA and Europe don't need them anyway. We need to spend our money on getting out of debt. Let the oil sheikhs waste their money on it.

Wrestling is among the most ancient of sports and an event in the classical Olympics.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby Alessandro » Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:28 pm

National grief in Mongolia for sure.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby LechoZX » Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:45 pm

It's back actually.

Wrestling Selected for 2020 Olympic Games
The Sport Was Chosen Over Bids From Squash, Baseball and Softball.


By MATTHEW FUTTER - WALL STREET JOURNAL

Wrestling regained entry into the Olympic Games program Sunday after the International Olympic Committee selected the sport for inclusion in the 2020 and 2024 Games over bids from squash, baseball and softball.

Wrestling won on the first ballot, gaining a majority 49 votes, with baseball and softball getting 24 votes and squash getting 22.

"Thank you for this opportunity to save our sport," wrestling federation President Nenad Llalovic said ahead of the vote. "It is not an underestimation to say this is the most important day in the 3,000-year history of our sport."

The vote ended a tumultuous six months for wrestling, which had a near-death experience in February when the executive board voted not to include it in the core program of 25 Olympic sports for the 2020 and 2024 Games, a decision that garnered withering criticism from the international sports community.

That forced wrestling to compete with seven other sports vying to gain the recommendation of the IOC's executive board for the final sport in the 2020 Games. In May, the board selected baseball, softball, squash and wrestling for Sunday's final vote in front of the full IOC.

Ahead of the vote Sunday, IOC member Richard Pound criticized a process that looked headed toward doing nothing more than reinstating one of the oldest Olympic sports rather than bringing in a new one. Mr. Pound suggested the IOC put off the vote for five months until meetings at the Sochi Olympics, and come up with a process that might ultimately reinstate wrestling and get a new sport into the Olympics.

But Gerhard Heiberg, an IOC member from Norway, and IOC President Jacques Rogge, urged the committee to stick with the agreed-upon process in fairness to the federations that had worked toward Sunday's meeting expecting an answer. "They all expect a decision and I cannot see why we should postpone," Mr. Heiberg said. "Yes we may end up with wrestling but that is a good thing."

Mr. Rogge said wrestling was eliminated from the core program because its international federation was so poorly managed. It had no athletes on its executive board or with any voting rights. No women had positions of power. The sport's rules were difficult to understand and the sport had been resistant to altering its presentation to make it more television friendly.

In recent months, wrestling changed the governance of its international federation, changed its rules to make the sport more active, added two new medal events for women and eliminated two for men.

"I love wrestling," said Prince Albert of Monaco said Saturday night. "It should stay in the program."

Mr. Llalovic and former U.S. Olympic Committee Jim Scherr led a presentation filled with humility and gratitude and an emotional testimony by the Daniel Igali the Nigerian-Canadian wrestling medalist. "I grew up as one of 20 siblings and if not for wrestling I might not have gotten much to eat," Mr. Igali told the IOC members.

"There was a mistake," Shekh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, an IOC member from Kuwait, said after the presentation. He was one of several IOC members who spoke in support of wrestling before the vote.

In a statement after the vote, Mr. Llalovic said, "I want to offer my sincere gratitude to each member of the International Olympic Committee that voted to save Olympic wrestling today. With this vote, you have shown that the steps we have taken to improve our sport have made a difference. I assure each of you that our modernization will not stop now. We will continue to strive to be the best partner to the Olympic Movement that we can be."

Mr. Rogge said the IOC expects to examine the core program every four years.
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Re: Wrestling removed from 2020 Olympics

Postby AztecDave » Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:54 pm

i believe wrestling was one of the original greek Olympic "sports." then came the buggering. those bleedin' Athenian boy-lovers.
The real Army, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage uniforms, from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That's the army in which I should like to fight.”
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