My Reaction to IOC's Decision to Potentially Drop Wrestling

The IOC executive board decided to put wrestling on a voting block with six other sports to decide which one will be on the 2020 Olympic program. Sports that were also close to being expelled were canoeing, modern pentathlon, taekwondo, and field hockey.  Other sports mentioned by the media to be in trouble were badminton, fencing, and cycling.

Since wrestling is not a traditional sport in Taiwan, I don't really have any strong feelings about this decision. I do feel puzzled about why wrestling and it does have historical ties to the Olympics. This sport holds true to the statement "higher, faster, stronger."

My strongest reactions are to some of the online comments people have posted. Nothing against wrestling but some of the comments are just plain idiotic. Here are some example:

"They choose curling over wrestling."

-Um…..we're talking about the summer Olympics not the winter Olympics. Curling wasn't even talked about at the executive meeting.

"They choose synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics over wrestling."

-This statement is misleading. The board was all about kicking out a sports federation. So kicking out rhythmic gymnastics would mean kicking out the FIG, which at the same time would be kicking out every gymnastics discipline. No FIG means no Gabby Douglas. Same thing for synchronized swimming which is under FINA. If FINA was dropped, all the swimming events would have been dropped. Yes that means no Michael Phelps or Ian Crocker.

"Nobody watches badminton and table tennis except for China."

-This statement is just so wrong on so many levels. Yes it is popular in China but it's also popular in the rest of Asia-Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore…… Even countries such as Germany and Denmark have strong traditions in this sport.

Also these sports have professional tours. These tour stops have sponsors and television contracts.  In addition to World Championships, badminton has the prestigious Thomas and Uber Cup for team events. I could go on. Wrestling has no such thing.

"Badminton needs to be replace due to the 2012 scandal"

Wrestling has had its own scandals. From Muslims refusing to fight Israelis to a Swedish athlete dumping his medal onto the mat, wrestling needs to clean up too. Plus watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4SeUdCg2JU

Disgusting.

Plus the Great Britain team tried to hire a bunch of Ukrainians to wrestle for them in this past Olympics. It blew up in their face when one of them failed a drug test.

"Wrestling has had so many iconic moments like Rulon Gardner."

I say SO HAS EVERY SPORT! I know of touching stories in every sport.

And to those that say modern pentathlon and taekwondo needs to be replaced, these sports federation lobbied hard and have constantly changed the format of their competitions in an effort to become more relevant. Modern pentathlon has combined running and shooting into one event and taekwondo has added video replay. Wrestling has done no such thing. They refused to drop Greco-Roman when the IOC told them to and they have more weight classes for men than women.

Again I have no personal vendetta against wrestling but trying to justify one sport over another without doing proper information makes me frustrated.

So wrestling will be put up against sports like baseball/softball, roller sports, wake boarding, squash,  wushu, and rock climbing. I'm expecting an uproar from the wrestling community to get wrestling back in and I think they have a 70% chance of succeeding.

Sports that would benefit Taiwan would be baseball/softball and roller sports. Unfortunately, I don't think they'll succeed. The IOC just needs to raise the cap on the number of sports.

What's your thinking to the IOC's decision?