September 13-2013
After a grueling seven-month campaign, wrestling was restored to the Olympic Games Sunday by a vote of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
But you may not recognize the sport the next time you go to see a match.
With 95 delegates from around the world voting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, wrestling got a majority of 49 votes to defeat baseball and softball, which drew 24 votes, and squash, which won 22 votes.
Defeat would likely have reduced wrestling to an insignificant sport globally. In the United States, it likely would have killed it off completely. For Iran, the elimination of the sport from the Olympics would have reduced Iran to a minor country in the Olympic world since two-thirds of all its Olympic medals over the decades have come in wrestling.
Wrestling was tentatively voted out of the Olympics by an IOC subcommittee in February. The vote was not so much against the sport itself as against the leadership of the sport, which had ignored the IOC’s complaints for years.
The February vote was a wake-up call for everyone in wrestling. It was a defeat for the traditionalists and immediately shifted power to those who advocated changing and modernizing the sport.
There were many complaints about wrestling, but four stuck out.
First, with feminism having planted its flag across the sports world, wrestling appeared to be the misogynist holdout. It had only reluctantly accepted women in the sport, but it still treated them as second-class citizens. Iran did not help; it barred—and still bars—women. But it held its tongue this year as the rest of the wrestling world agreed to changes giving women a greater role.
Second, the sport was criticized for impenetrable decisions in which officials often had more say in who won than the athletes on the mat.
Third, wrestling was viewed as dull and lacking in action—unappealing in the television age. At many points in matches, it was smarter for a wrestler to be passive and not to risk the points he had racked up earlier. Many other sports have altered their rules in recent decades to encourage more action and aggressiveness, but wrestling had refused to reform.
Fourth, wrestling’s leadership was not respected within the Olympic movement. That leadership dominated the governing body of global wrestling, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles, known as FILA from its French initials.
The IOC subcommittee vote in February cut wrestling off the list of 25 Olympic sports, but put it onto a list of eight different sports that would compete for the one opening left for an Olympic sport. That list of eight was soon shortened to just three—wrestling, squash and a combined bid by baseball and softball. Wrestling had to work hard—and fast—to get back into the Olympics.
The reformers in wrestling mobilized instantly. Within days, they had forced out of office the Swiss president of FILA, Raphael Martinetti. They replaced him with Nenad Lalovic, a huge and gregarious Serb who looks like a caricature of a wrestler, with broad shoulders, masses of flesh and no discernible neck.
The sport owes a huge debt to Lalovic, who, more than any other single individual, changed things around in seven months.
On Sunday, before the IOC vote, Lalovic said, “Today is the most important day in the 3,000-year history of our sport. And, believe me, we feel the weight of that history. Remaining in the Olympic program is crucial to our survival.”
Wrestling has been an Olympic sport since the first Olympic Games were played in Olympia, Greece, in 708 BCE, 2,721 years ago.
The reformers went to work to re-craft a whole new sport.
The rules were amended to make matches more dynamic, rewarding wrestlers who are more aggressive and punishing those who remain passive.
Matches will now consist of two three-minute rounds instead of three two-minute rounds. Takedowns will count for two points instead of one. Matches will be decided on accumulated points, not the best two-out-of-three rounds.
Wrestlers will now have “more time to develop the fight,” Lalovic said.
“In two minutes, that was practically impossible,” he said.
Wrestlers also will have more control in determining the outcome of matches, said Aleksandr Karelin of Russia, who won three Olympic gold medals in Greco-Roman wrestling. “Wrestlers have a big chance to decide on the mat, not another reason, not referee, not judges,” he said.
The impact of judges and referees has often irritated wrestlers with complaints of, say, an Asian referee favoring an Asian competitor. The sport has been much criticized for the role of its referees and judges.
The reforms added more weight divisions for women to make them equal to men. In recent years, there have been seven weight divisions in men’s freestyle and seven in men’s Greco-Roman, but just four for women’s freestyle. The sport will now have six weight divisions in each. That means the total number of medals will stay at 72. (The sport has also been criticized for the huge number of medals it gobbles up.)
Lalovic said the sport would also be open to creating a women’s Greco-Roman category if there was enough interest. But he didn’t press that point, as it would re-open the issue of the volume of medals.
Other changes are being discussed but have not yet been adopted. They may offend purists because they are aimed at making wrestling more an entertainment for spectators and thus a draw for television.
“We will change everything,” said Lalovic. “The whole scenery of the venue.” The red-and-yellow mat is expected to go the way of the full Nelson, replaced perhaps by shades of blue.
“Our singlets [uniforms] are so old fashioned,” Lalovic said. Freestyle wrestlers could wear fight shorts and a tight-fitting microfiber T-shirt. Greco-Roman wrestlers may even go shirtless.
Staged weigh-ins, walk-out music, lighting, visual effects and video screen replays are being discussed.
FILA officials have had meetings with entertainment and broadcasting experts as well as potential sponsors to increase the sport’s appeal. “Of course we have external help for that because we are wrestlers — we know much, but not everything,” Lalovic said with a laugh.
The changes will be rolled out gradually, but the big unveiling will be at the 2015 World Championships to be held in Las Vegas. “Yes, the entertainment capital of the world,” said Jim Scherr, a former chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee.
But what happens in Vegas, won’t stay in Vegas. “Las Vegas will be a big proving ground for the new ideas. Hopefully they’ll be perfected there and then taken to Rio,” Scherr said, referring to the 2016 Olympics.
The continuation of wrestling in the Olympics was “critically important” to the health of the sport at the grass-roots level in the United States, said Scherr.
Wrestling remains popular in high school and has added teams at smaller colleges, but it has struggled at the Division I top-level universities amid budget constraints since it doesn’t bring in any revenue.
“Because of economic pressures,” Scherr said, a non-revenue producing sport that loses its Olympic imprimatur was “a sport that’s potentially at risk.”
In addition, many college wrestlers in the US have spoken of dropping out if they lose the chance of going to the Olympics.
Softball and baseball exited the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing Games. North American professional baseball, unlike hockey, has not been willing to halt its season for the Olympics and commit the world’s best players to participate.
Softball apparently could not convince the IOC of its universal appeal. The United States, Japan and Australia won 11 of the 12 available medals in the four Games in which the sport was contested. Wrestling, on the other hand, appeals broadly around the world and is a sport that gives an opening to the Olympics for athletes from many smaller countries that can’t compete in team sports.
Interestingly, baseball/softball did not draw strong support from among Americans, as one might expect. Polls show Americans largely backing wrestling as an Olympic sport. For most Americans, baseball is a major sport—but the top action is the World Series and baseball fans (and professional team owners) rarely see the Olympics as important for them. Softball, for most Americans, is a pickup sport to be played among friends in blue jeans at picnics, and not an Olympic sport.
Squash has never appeared in the Olympics.
But there is still a chance that both baseball/softball and squash could be voted into the 2020 Games in Tokyo, where baseball is hugely popular and stadiums are in place.
Squash is basing its appeal on the small number of athletes (64) needed for the Olympics, the fan-friendliness of glass courts that can be built in exotic locations and the ability of countries that are not traditional Olympic powers to win medals.
On Sunday, each of the three sports had 20 minutes to make its case to the IOC.
Don Porter, the American co-president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, choked up and had tears in his eyes as he talked about receiving letters from young girls who were distraught when softball was dropped.
“We want to give every little girl and boy in the world a chance to play our game,” Porter said.
Antonio Castro, the son of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, played up baseball’s global appeal. “Today we are the most popular sport in the world which is not part of the Olympic program,” he said. “As everyone knows, baseball is not just a sport, it’s a business.” Oddly, the American and Cuban link on baseball did not get the media attention that the American and Iranian link on wrestling received.
Squash federation chief N. Ramachandran said his sport would represent the future, not the past, an apparent dig at wrestling, which constantly emphasized its unequaled history as an Olympic sport.
Much of the news coverage of the past seven months focused on the picture of old rivals Iran, the United States and Russia working together to save wrestling. That was an exaggeration. The US government did nothing, as the federal government does not play a role in sports in the United Stats unless there is a scandal. The cooperation was actually between the wrestling federations in the three countries—and they have always been cooperative.
US wrestlers adore Iran because the sport they love is so big in Iran. America’s star wrestlers often comment that they are unknown in the United States but recognized on the streets in Tehran! Despite (or perhaps because of) the sour relations between the two governments, US wrestlers competing in Iran get first-class treatment there and massive cheers from wrestling fans. In the United States, the applause from the near-empty stands for an American wrestler comes from mom and dad, supportive uncles and a girlfriend who has little idea what is going on.
The bottom line, especially in the United States, is that “wrestling needs the Olympics more than the Olympics needs wrestling,” as Washington Post columnist Tracee Hamilton put it.
Wrestling draws many athletes because of the opportunity it presents to be an Olympian. Without that, many youngsters would go into canoeing or taekwondo or some other sport that would give them a chance at appearing in the Olympics. Without the Olympics, the high point of wrestling would be the annual World Championships, which garner little news coverage or appeal outside the confines of the sport itself.
Wrestling would still probably have appeal in Iran because the sport has a long history there that goes beyond the Olympics. The problem for Iran is that wrestling (and weightlifting) really constitute the Olympics for Iranians. Two-thirds of all of Iran’s Olympic medals have been in wrestling and 90 percent have been in wrestling and weightlifting. The first medal in another sport was not chalked up until the 2000 Olympics. Since first appearing in the Olympics in 1948, Iran has won 60 medals—38 in wrestling, 16 in weightlifting, five in taekwondo since 2000 and one silver in discus, which was won last summer.
Without wrestling, Iran would be reduced to a minor participant in the Olympics.
