Wrestling Eliminated from Olympics

[Buzz]

Russian wrestler Sagid Murtazaliyev is returning the gold medal he won in Sydney in protest against the sport's planned exclusion from the Olympics.
http://msn.foxsports.com/olympics/wr...protest-022713

President of the Bulgarian wrestling committee Valentin Yordanov has also returned his 1996 gold medal in protest.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/-ol...mpic-notebook/

[Buzz]

A nice article on what wrestling means to thousands of young boys from Russia's Caucasus region.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...0da_story.html

[Buzz]

According to USA Today all hope is not lost. FILA's new president Nenad Lalovic is going to meet with Jacques Rogge on Thursday to talk about what changes in the sport's rules the IOC would like to see take place. Hopefully wrestlng will come up with something that will make the IOC happy enough that they will keep wrestling in the Olympics.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...urdle/1955199/

[allezfred]

Getting more people to watch it would be a start. Amazing the amount of people who have posted their outrage here and elsewhere starting with "I don't watch it all, but...."

Maybe they should get them to wrestle naked?

[Ziggy]

Getting more people to watch it would be a start. Amazing the amount of people who have posted their outrage here and elsewhere starting with "I don't watch it all, but...."

Maybe they should get them to wrestle naked?

They should totally be wrestling in mankinis.

[Buzz]

I'm all for that and I actually do watch this type of wrestling whenever it is on. . To be honest I always thought the Olympics was for lesser known sports like wrestling which don't get much attention otherwise. The tv stations are saturated with stuff like golf and tennis everyday almost and to which the Olympics really do not mean as much. Even the summer olympics marquee sport of gymnastics do not get much airtime outside the Olympics.

[AlexDSSF]

If wrestling does get voted back into the Olympics, it does need to make some changes. A reduction of quotas per country would work, for one: four men in men's freestyle, four men in Greco-Roman, and two women in women's freestyle. (Should Greco-Roman get the ax as part of a deal, they can enlarge the women's freestyle events and adjust the quotas accordingly.) In fact, I think that all combat sports in the Olympics should have quota reductions. Taekwondo does: a maximum of two men and two women per country.

[kwanfan1818]

Getting more people to watch it would be a start. Amazing the amount of people who have posted their outrage here and elsewhere starting with "I don't watch it all, but...."

Maybe they should get them to wrestle naked?

I don't watch a lot of sports, but that doesn't mean I think the sports don't belong in the Olympics. Some I'd watch live; I don't think TV does them justice, especially when there's a lot of cutting back and forth.

I did watch some wrestling this year: Canadian TV showed a lot, since Canada had medal contenders.

[Domshabfan]

If wrestling does get voted back into the Olympics, it does need to make some changes. A reduction of quotas per country would work, for one: four men in men's freestyle, four men in Greco-Roman, and two women in women's freestyle. (Should Greco-Roman get the ax as part of a deal, they can enlarge the women's freestyle events and adjust the quotas accordingly.) In fact, I think that all combat sports in the Olympics should have quota reductions. Taekwondo does: a maximum of two men and two women per country.

Hope not ... That would be so unfair to many athletes, especially since the gold medals where fairly spread out between the nationals unlike say swimming where almost half the gold medals where won by a single country (USA 16/34 gold medals). Worst part is IOC was seriously considering to including all the 50m events and 800 and 1500 freestyle event for Men and Women respectively. I guess IOC wanted to see more gold medals for Phelps.

Swimming 34 events, 9 countries won the gold medal(USA, China, France, Netherlands, South Africa, Hungary, Australia, Tunisia, Lithuania), total of 19 countries won medal out of 102 medals available.

Wrestling 18 events, 8 countries won the gold medal (Russia, Iran, Japan, Azerbaijan, USA, Cuba, Uzbekistan, South Korea), total of 29 countries won medal out of 72 medals available.

As for Taekwondo, if those rules did not exist South Korea would walk away with all 8 gold medals, at least this was the reality when sport was introduced to the Olympics.

[milanessa]

Getting more people to watch it would be a start. Amazing the amount of people who have posted their outrage here and elsewhere starting with "I don't watch it all, but...."

Maybe they should get them to wrestle naked?

I don't know about outrage but I like some traditions and wrestling just seems like it "belongs" in the Olys. Won't impact my life much, I don't watch it. My husband was a wrestler in high school and college - only sport he was good at until he found cycling.

[Buzz]

Wrestling is getting a lot of support from Wall Street because as it turns out, many who work there used to dabble in the sport at one time or another. Now they are trying to raise a sizable amount of cash in order to lobby the IOC. To keep the sport in the Olympic movement. If it is one thing the IOC understands is money.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/95a47e08-8...#axzz2MciEDSst

[Ziggy]

Olympic Champion and now Bulgarian National Team's wrestling coach started a hunger strike:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/wrestling/21654061

[Buzz]

There is a push in India as well to preserve wrestling's Olympic status. Two of the country's wrestling medal winners said they are prepared to return their medals if it will help.
http://www.indiatimes.com/sports/oth...als-65202.html

[heckles]

To be honest I always thought the Olympics was for lesser known sports like wrestling which don't get much attention otherwise.

Theoretically that is one of the criteria for a sport's inclusion. One of the reasons that baseball was cut was that it already enjoys plenty of attention outside the Olympics, plus it has a competition other than the Olympics that is considered the most important competition for that sport: World Series.

[Buzz]

Wrestling's new chief says the sport's governing body was negligent and did not defend the sport's case when it's fate was being decided by the IOC. I guess that has changed now.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...-says/1994567/

[Buzz]

Someone wrote a nice letter in support of keeping wrestling in the Olympics so for the sake of bumping up this thread I am posting the link.

http://www.silverbelt.com/v2_news_ar...&story_id=4858

[Seerek]

Theoretically that is one of the criteria for a sport's inclusion. One of the reasons that baseball was cut was that it already enjoys plenty of attention outside the Olympics, plus it has a competition other than the Olympics that is considered the most important competition for that sport: World Series.

The IOC has various criteria when considering dropping and/or adding sports to the Olympic roster. Visibility is one of them for sure.

IOC has also used lack of competition as a criteria for possible exclusion from Olympics. For example, The International Ice Hockey Federation is still confident that the IOC will keep women's hockey in the Olympics, although Jacques Rogge commented “we cannot continue without improvement." in 2010. USA and Canada have met in the final of all 15 World Championships since 1990.

Women’s hockey at risk of being dropped from the Olympics?

[angelflies]

Womens hockey should go. Only 2 countries can even play the sport. I watch some of the event sometimes and everyone besides Canada and the U.S are a joke. Even Canadians and Americans are bored by it, as it is 2 weeks of slop until the final between Canada and the U.S, the only relevent game.

[manhn]

Is there precedent of removing one gender's competition but keeping the other? If they remove women's hockey, they have to remove men's hockey.

[sammyf]

Is there precedent of removing one gender's competition but keeping the other? If they remove women's hockey, they have to remove men's hockey.

Don't they just need to keep them numbers even? Remove womens hockey, add womens sychro skating.