The International Olympic Committee has dropped Wrestling from the 2020 Summer Games, a surprising decision that has bewildered athletes and fans of the longtime Olympic sport.
The IOC said Tuesday that its Executive Board recommended excluding wrestling from its list of core sports. Wrestling still has a chance to return to the Games in 2020 via a complicated process: The IOC later this year will choose one of eight shortlisted sports—Wrestling, Baseball/Softball, Climbing, Karate, Roller Sports, Squash, Wakeboarding and a Chinese martial art called Wushu—to add to the 2020 program.
The move to drop Wrestling, which has been in every modern Olympics since the inaugural 1896 Athens Games except 1900, reflects the IOC's attempts to innovate to lure younger fans. In recent years the Olympics had added emerging sports such as beach volleyball and BMX cycling.
Olympic Wrestling has been threatened for the past decade. In 2002, the IOC commissioned a review of Olympic Sports that said Wrestling had a "lack of global popularity" as well as "relatively low broadcast and press coverage." The problem stemmed from the public's confusion between Wrestling's two disciplines: Greco-Roman, which forbids holds below the waist, and freestyle, which allows them. The report recommended dropping one of the disciplines from the 2008 Beijing Games, which didn't happen.
The Tuesday announcement that the IOC was dropping wrestling entirely stunned Rulon Gardner, the American who pulled off a famous Olympic upset at the 2000 Sydney Games, when he beat Russian legend Aleksandr Karelin to win Greco-Roman gold.
"I heard rumors that they might drop one style of wrestling, but we had no idea they'd say, 'Here's the death penalty,'" Gardner said. He said he didn't understand the economics of the decision. "What does it cost them, a few extra dollars for people in the Olympic Village?" he said, referring to the athletes' dormitories.
In London last summer, 29 countries won Medals in Men's and Women's Wrestling. The sport also produced one of the most enduring images of the Olympics, when American Gold Medalist Jordan Burroughs and Iranian Silver Medalist Sadegh Goudarzi embraced each other on the podium.
Christophe Dubi, director of sport for the IOC, said the vote was part of a process that began in 2001 after Dr. Jacques Rogge took over as president of the organization and said he wanted to limit the size, cost and complexity of the Games. The IOC then decided it would limit the Games to 28 sports, and roughly 10,500 athletes and about 300 events.
To keep the Olympics fresh, however, the IOC decided it would have 25 core sports and three spots for new or revived competitions. In 2009, Golf and Rugby were approved for the 2016 and 2020. For the final slot, the IOC decided that one of its 26 existing sports would have to compete against the new applicant sports.
"The idea overall is to renew the program and to keep it relevant and appealing to new audiences," said Mark Adams, chief spokesman for the IOC.
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