Wrestling Eliminated from Olympics

[millyskate]

Golf is expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Wrestling is accessible to people of modest means and with the historical connections, I'm really sad to see it go.

I love watching modern pentathlon, so I'm happy it's staying. I don't see that any of the sports wanting to get in deserve wrestling's spot.

[Asli]

Two people have now called golf an "elitist" sport. It is not elitist. Expensive, yes, but it is accessible to anyone who wants to play it - and there are often programs for kids who families cannot afford the equipment to be able to play anyway. My son will be playing golf in college, and I can assure you (being a skater myself) that it has cost me far less to prepare for him to play golf at the college level than it would have cost me to prepare a figure skater to skate at, say, a regional level. I would argue that figure skating is far more elitist than golf, being more expensive and less accessible to lower income people and the general masses.

I said "Drop a sport where poorer countries do well and add a sport for the elite." So I was talking in terms of the wealth of countries. I believe you are from the USA, the number one richest country in the world. Therefore the fact that your son can play golf does not mean that this is a sport available in Georgia or Azerbaijan.

One more thing about golf, and I will let it drop. Someone upthread said that golf damages the environment, and this is not completely true. Yes, they use pesticides etc, but they also often participate in environmental programs and take pride in being good environmental stewards.

Again I believe you come from a country where space is not a problem. You can have forests, agricultural areas AND golf facilities. If rich businessmen were content to play golf in their own countries, it would not be so bad. But no, they always need new destinations, so precious forests are cut down in countries with already little forest area and invaluable first quality agricultural soil is ruined for golf facilities.

[joeperryfan]

I didn't mean that MMA was fake, just the "pro" wrestling from which I believe it spawned. The stories my parents would tell us of when they went and watched wrestling. Of course, at that time it wasn't as bad, but bad enough. Anyone remember "the Skeik"? How about "Hulk Hogan"?

That kind of pro wrestling is entertainment, not sport, the matches are staged, so it is fake in terms of result. Some wrestlers have backgrounds in amateur wrestling but most don't.

I guess sports like synchro swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are protected because they balance the genders at the Olympics but I'm still surprised they weren't in the throw-away mix, as I am surprised that roller skating is being considered to join...

One positive thing about golf however is that it brings in older competitors, which only a handfull of other sports does as well.

[Jenny]

I think Aragorn might be mistaken - I was curious too and did a search, and came up with this article from last summer:

"I have been watching the Olympics and I'm really excited about golf being an Olympic sport," Phil Mickelson said during a conference call to reporters at Bethpage on Monday. "It also gives me great motivation to continue to work and practice in an effort to become an Olympic athlete."

[Ziggy]

The IOC has voted to eliminate wrestling from the Olympics. To be honest, I am shocked. Wrestling is one of those sports where multiple countries tend to win medals, where many countries, including countries that don't have a ton of money for sports, do well. Why a sport with such a big international rate of participation? If they were going to get rid of something, why not cycling, with its apparently wide-spread doping?

It's just shocking. What everybody else has said. Also, it's a sport that's been at the original Olympics in Ancient Greece, for fcuk's sake!

It's about the money sadly. It's not a sport sponsors are interested in.

I'm really angry about this.

It just makes no sense to me that they'd eliminate a sport that is so, in a way, egalitarian. Many, many nations do well in this sport, even nations that have very few, if any, other elite athletes compete at the elite level in wrestling.

The sport, relative to many, costs very little to get involved in, and it has such a long history. That it was even one of the finalists to be eliminated shocked me. Then to learn that it had been chosen for elimination!

That's what's most infuriating. Middle-Eastern and Asian countries do very well with wrestling because it's a sport you can achieve success in, even if you can't put a lot of money into it, which those countries aren't able to.

That says it all. Drop a sport where poorer countries do well and add a sport for the elite.

I hate golf. In my country ancient and beautiful forests have been destroyed to build golf courses for a few hundred wealthy people to play. It depletes the water resources and chemicals must be used to keep the grass green at all seasons. It is a disaster for the environment.

This x infinity.

Two people have now called golf an "elitist" sport. It is not elitist. Expensive, yes, but it is accessible to anyone who wants to play it - and there are often programs for kids who families cannot afford the equipment to be able to play anyway. My son will be playing golf in college, and I can assure you (being a skater myself) that it has cost me far less to prepare for him to play golf at the college level than it would have cost me to prepare a figure skater to skate at, say, a regional level. I would argue that figure skating is far more elitist than golf, being more expensive and less accessible to lower income people and the general masses.

One more thing about golf, and I will let it drop. Someone upthread said that golf damages the environment, and this is not completely true. Yes, they use pesticides etc, but they also often participate in environmental programs and take pride in being good environmental stewards.

Accessible to anyone who has craploads of money. Which defines elitist.

Figure skating might be an elitist sport in the USA where you pay coaches 100 dollars an hour or more but in Poland you pay a flat fee of less than 100 dollars per month making it a reasonably accessible sport and there are skaters successful at the national and international level who came from working class families.

Participating in environmental programs is a fig leaf much like the Ronald McDonald foundation or other crap like this. Creating and maintaining a golf course causes massive damage to the environment. You have to destroy everything on a big patch of land and you then regularly spray it with pesticides and use tons and tons of water to maintain it.

[morqet]

I guess sports like synchro swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are protected because they balance the genders at the Olympics but I'm still surprised they weren't in the throw-away mix, as I am surprised that roller skating is being considered to join...

I think (but not 100% sure!) that synchro swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are considered subsets of the disciplines of swimming and gymnastics, so they would only be removed if the whole sport of swimming was voted out, or if FINA or FIG decided to re-organise the events within their sports that are held at the Olympics, in the way that cycling has been changing the track events over the last couple of Olympic cycles.

[danceronice]

One of the articles I read brought up an interesting point. Pentathlon is willing to completely overhaul it's format and do anything to stay in.

Not QUITE anything. One of the groups that's got a lot of lobbyists to get Pentathalon kicked out or substantially revised (ie, elimination of the jumping phase) is the equestrian sports, because despite the protestations of their federation, and the fact there are SOME decent riders on the Pentathalon teams, it's excruciatingly painful for riders to watch because most of the countries' athletes don't spend much time on riding. Watching them slam horses in the mouth and back, crash through fences, and reach a point where your're rooting for a rider to just fall off so they'll stop beating up the poor horse isn't really very sporting. It's not necessarily easy to ride a strange horse (though everyone who competes in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association does it all the time) but some of the Pentathaletes aren't so much riding as grabbing the reins, kicking the horse, and hoping for the best...

[aliceanne]

I've gotten to the point where I view the Olympics more as professional entertainment than amateur athletics. The basketball and hockey teams are not real sports teams that regularly train together. They are essentially a group of ringers who don't even necessarily live or work in the country they are representing at the Olympics. There is no pretense at a level playing field anymore. Some athletes are wealthy pros, some have corporate sponsors, some are funded by their government, and some are completely on their own. Then there is the matter of Canada's "own the podium" program at Vancouver and Russia firing their sports minister for not winning enough gold medals. This is about winning by pumping money into a select group of elite athletes not participation or sportsmanship .

[snoopy]

I heard a NPR story on this (related link below but not as descriptive). The gist I got from it is that the individual members of the IOC who voted on this just didn't have any personal stake with wrestling and somehow they did with other sports. So it was a personal interest decison.

Those guys are, in short, a**holes.

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/12/171837...ter-2016-games

[kwanfan1818]

I do remember a few curlers with quite the beer bellies though.

For every Randy Ferbey at the elite level, there are many more Glenn Howards, guys in their late 30's and 40's who are in phenomenal shape

In my country ancient and beautiful forests have been destroyed to build golf courses for a few hundred wealthy people to play. It depletes the water resources and chemicals must be used to keep the grass green at all seasons. It is a disaster for the environment.

That's not true of all golf courses, for example the more natural courses in Scotland that are on a different model than courses with miles of manicures greens, and there are places like Ireland and the Pacific Northwest where they aren't the same water drain, but for the most part, they are environmental nightmares. (I feel the same way about many lawns.). When I was last in Hyderbad, a city with significant water problems, although no foliage let alone forest to cut down, they were building a golf course across from Hi-Tek City. WTF?

difficult, much more than it looks when watching.

Are "these days" that different from Vancouver? John Shuster (who medaled in Torino) is not the pinnacle of 'in shape' (his Olympic picture he looks more slender than some others on the internet where he has a double chin) and said in an interview with Stephen Colbert that he can't touch his toes. Now, touching your toes might not be a skilled valued in curling- but most people would think a 'fit' person could do that.

Many fit or elite athletes don't have the flexibility in their hips/hip flexors to be able to thrown a rock in the correct position or the upper body strength to sweep strongly over the course of long games and the rounds of competition.

[Skittl1321]

For every Randy Ferbey at the elite level, there are many more Glenn Howards, guys in their late 30's and 40's who are in phenomenal shape

Haven't a clue who these people are, and don't really care to google. I never said ALL curlers were out of shape- it was just in response to the idea that golfer's aren't athletes because not all of them are in shape. Some apparently are a little chubby, others are in phenomenal shape. Not all curlers are in phenomenal shape, though some are, it doesn't mean it isn't a difficult sport.

[Ziggy]

And why is wushu even considered? It's such a niche sport...

And yet we still have the 2 country monopoly that is Women's hockey?

Equality says hello.

[skipaway]

US Gov't Wants to get Involved

Senators and representatives from both parties stood in agreement Friday against the International Olympic Committee's decision to take wrestling to the mat, eliminating the sport from the games starting in 2020. They introduced resolutions urging the IOC to reinstate it and called on the United States Olympic Committee to "work actively to reverse this decision."



The group includes both senators from Iowa – Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Tom Harkin – where one of the country's largest high school state wrestling meets got underway this week. It's a tournament which is expected to draw tens of thousands of fans to Des Moines.

[allezfred]

I'm pretty sure the Japanese Olympic Committee will be lobbying to get it back in again as women's wrestling has been quite successful for Japan. Hopefully any Japanese companies who are sponsors will get behind it too.

[Buzz]

I have been disgusted with FIFA for quite a while now but always thought the IOC had done a good job of getting it's act together. But now all this has me changing my mind about the IOC.

[Rex]

The IOC has voted to eliminate wrestling from the Olympics. To be honest, I am shocked. Wrestling is one of those sports where multiple countries tend to win medals, where many countries, including countries that don't have a ton of money for sports, do well. Why a sport with such a big international rate of participation? If they were going to get rid of something, why not cycling, with its apparently wide-spread doping?

Or horseback riding maybe? I'm not even a big wrestling fan, but yeah, I don't think it's a good idea to eliminate it...

[maatTheViking]

The other day the local (Seatte Times) sports front page was a story on the High School wrestling state championships. Looks like it is pretty big here too.

[reckless]

Here are some facts on wrestling from the 2012 Olympics.

71 countries competed in wrestling. 29 countries won medals. They included Mongolia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Georgia, Iran, Puerto Rico, Uzbekistan, Estonia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Of the 71 medals awarded, 16 were awarded to women (representing 11 different countries).

In the 14 men's events, gold medals were won by representatives of eight different countries.

I think that is a pretty remarkable amount of diversity given that wrestling only had 18 to 20 competitors in each event. The only other sports that are comparable in terms of diversity are athletics (with representatives from 201 countries competing in 47 events and its 143 medals divided between 41 countries), boxing (79 countries in 13 events due to a quota system set up for qualifying from different regions and 52 medals divided between 20 countries, and many weights had 26 qualifiers), and judo (56 medals in 14 events split among 23 countries) (judo actually had 388 competitors from 134 countries, but that was because it allowed so many qualifiers, with each men's class having more than 30 qualifiers).

[Ziggy]

Yep and that's one of the reasons it should stay.

[heckles]

That's not true of all golf courses, for example the more natural courses in Scotland that are on a different model than courses with miles of manicures greens, and there are places like Ireland and the Pacific Northwest where they aren't the same water drain, but for the most part, they are environmental nightmares. (I feel the same way about many lawns.).

You miss the most important point about golf: golfers are, as a rule, a bunch of self-important dweebs.