September 06-13
The world of wrestling will learn Sunday whether it will survive or be killed off by the Olympic Games.
Wrestling, squash and a combined bid from baseball-softball are now making their final pleas to the full assembly of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The IOC will then vote Sunday on which sport gets the last spot in the 2020 Olympics.
The pitch the IOC is hearing from FILA, the sport’s international governing body, is that wrestling is a pure, global, evolving and all-inclusive sport that’s long been the essence of the Olympic movement.
“We have done everything possible in this time frame,” FILA President Nenad Lalovic of Serbia said. Wrestling had a lot of work to do after an IOC committee recommended in February that wresting be dumped from the Olympics.
Issues including leadership, gender equity and a product that many viewed as confusing and unappealing had plagued the sport for years.
FILA responded with quick and sweeping changes in all aspects of the sport.
The organization’s first step was to replace Raphael Martinetti of Switzerland as president. Accused of being out of touch and not knowing what was going on in the IOC, Martinetti resigned just days after the recommendation to sack wrestling. Lalovic immediately went to work improving wrestling’s ties to the IOC.
Lalovic believes that FILA’s once-strained relationship with the IOC has since improved. In fact, wrestling answered the IOC’s request for more gender equity by adding two weight classes to women’s freestyle. The change, which comes at the expense of one weight class in men’s freestyle and one in Greco-Roman, will go into effect for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Now women’s wrestling, freestyle and Greco-Roman will all have six weight divisions.
FILA has also allocated more positions for women in its governance, including a vice presidency and a three spots on its bureau.
Rules changes designed to make wrestling easier to understand and more fun to watch could prove to be the main difference.
The sport dropped the controversial rule forcing an athlete to pick a ball from a bag to determine overtime positions. The lucky wrestler who was awarded the offensive spot on a blind draw almost always prevailed.
Wrestling also notably switched from a best-of-three periods format to a pair of three, two-minute frames with cumulative scoring, along with points incentives designed to encourage more active wrestling.
After resisting change for decades, wrestling knew it had to show it could adapt to modern times.
“The rules are better than they were on February 12 [before the IOC committee vote]. I think everyone in wrestling agreed that the ball pull … wasn’t something that really fit with the sport. The two, three-minute cumulative scoring and the elimination of the luck of the draw concept has really made the sport,” USA Wrestling executive director Rich Bender said. “I think it’s also been an opportunity for the sport to galvanize itself around wrestling, and I think that’s a good thing.”
Despite what many construed as a death sentence from the IOC committee, wrestling is now considered the favorite to remain in the Olympics. The final word comes Sunday.
