By Karolos Grohmann
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Japan's Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu (in blue) fights with India's Sushil Kumar on the final of the Men's 66Kg Freestyle wrestling at the ExCel venue during the London 2012 Olympic Games August 12, 2012. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Contested in the first modern Olympics
in 1896 and part of the ancient Games in Olympia, wrestling will now join seven
other candidate sports battling for one spot in a revamped programme.
It is unlikely, however, that it will
get a reprieve when the IOC session in Buenos Aires votes on the recommendation
in September as this would defeat the purpose of Tuesday's vote.
"This is not the end of the
process, this is purely a recommendation," IOC spokesman Mark Adams told
reporters following an Executive Board meeting. "It is the session which is
sovereign."
"It was a decision to look at the
core sports, what works best for the Olympic games. This was the best programme
for the 2020 Olympics. This is not about what's wrong with wrestling but what
is good for the Games."
The vote came as a major shock after
other sports, including modern pentathlon and taekwondo, were seen as more at
risk of losing out due to their low global appeal.
"FILA was greatly astonished by
today's recommendation of the IOC Executive Board not to maintain wrestling
among the 25 core sports for the 2020 Olympic Games," the international
wrestling federation said in a statement.
It said the federation was represented
in 180 countries, "with wrestling being the national sport in a fair
amount of them and the only possibility for athletes to represent their country
at the Olympic Games, thus contributing to their universality.
"FILA will take all necessary
measures to convince the IOC... of the aberration of such a decision against
one of the founding sports of the ancient and modern Olympic Games," it
said, adding it would meet next week to discuss its next steps.
Board members were given a report on
each of the Olympic sports which provided details on 39 criteria such as
popularity, finances, tickets sold, anti-doping and governance, before a secret
vote.
"There were different rounds of
voting necessary to come to this conclusion," said IOC vice president
Thomas Bach. "It is an extremely difficult decision to take."
"I cannot look into the heads of
my colleagues. Such a decision is never based on one single reason. It is
always a series of reasons. Of course, different members take a different
approach."
"The common understanding is the
purpose of this was to modernise, to look into the future of the
Olympics," added Bach, a potential IOC presidential candidate later this
year.
The 15-member executive board needed
four rounds of voting to decide on wrestling with pentathlon, hockey, canoeing
and taekwondo also getting votes to be dropped from the Games.
IOC president Jacques Rogge did not
vote.
Canoeing scored the fewest and was
eliminated first with taekwondo following it to safety in the next round,
leaving three sports in the decider.
Wrestling got eight votes against it in
the final round of voting with hockey and pentathlon tied at three votes each.
SECRET BALLOT
"I am very surprised by the
result," board member and president of the International ice hockey
federation Rene Fasel told Reuters. "Personally, I do not know why but
that is what the majority wanted."
The IOC said 25 of the 26 Olympic
sports were elected as core sports for the 2020 Games which will also include
rugby and golf, making their first appearance in 2016.
Wrestling joins baseball and softball,
making a joint bid after being taken off the programme in 2005, martial arts
karate and wushu, rollersports, wakeboarding, squash and sports climbing as
candidates for the one open spot.
The IOC executive board will meet in St
Petersburg in May to determine which of these will be put to the vote in
September.
"We knew that today would be a
tough day for American athletes competing in whatever sport was identified by
the IOC Executive Board," said United States Olympic Committee CEO Scott
Blackmun, whose country is an Olympic powerhouse in the sport.
"Given the history and tradition
of wrestling, and its popularity and universality, we were surprised when the
decision was announced."
"It's important to remember that
today's action is a recommendation, and we hope that there will be a meaningful
opportunity to discuss the important role that wrestling plays in the sports
landscape both in the United States and around the world," he said.
USA Wrestling has already responded by
setting up a Facebook page called 'Keep Wrestling in the Olympics'.
Wrestling had 344 athletes at the
London Olympics, competing in greco-roman and freestyle disciplines. Women's
events were introduced at the Athens 2004 Olympics.
MAJOR BLOW
Russian wrestling federation chief
Mikhail Mamiashvili was shocked by the decision but was confident his sport
would remain in the Games.
"I'm absolutely convinced this
ancient sport will retain its status," Mamiashvili, who won an Olympic
gold medal in 1988, told Reuters.
"But FILA (the world amateur
wrestling federation), the whole wrestling community must take a more active
role in the process. We need to make some drastic changes in the sport, make it
more attractive, especially for TV audiences," he said.
Olympic exclusion will be a major blow
to the sport's popularity and financial stability as the Games are a global
platform for the promotion of smaller, less established sports.
"It is very unfortunate,"
Satpal Singh, coach of India's twice Olympic medal winner Sushil Kumar, told
Reuters. "It is being played from the first Olympics and is played all
over the world."
International Modern Pentathlon Union
president Klaus Schormann welcomed the news.
"In the last few years we acted
and took decisions to make our sport more telegenic and more compact,"
Schormann told Reuters. "So every good news is further motivation for
us."
Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul are bidding
to host the 2020 Olympics with a decision also to be taken in September.
Source: Reuters.
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