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The IOC is Giving Up Wrestling for Lent
Patheos
February 14, 2013
By Kyle Roberts
Cutting the oldest Olympic sport
from the Olympics is a bad idea. But that's exactly what the IOC is
proposing for 2020. Once it is out of the olympics (to make room for
modern pentathalon, wakeboarding, wushu and a few others). I've got
nothing against those sports (I don't know what some of them are), but
I do know that wrestling is one of the oldest sports, dating back to
when Greeks and the Romans started this whole deal. As Rulon Gardner
said recently, when you think of the Olympics, you think marathon and
wrestling. To be fair, you also think of swimming, and gymnastics,
and...well, you get the point.
Wrestling is primal; it's one person's strength, cunning, training,
stamina and will against another's-right there in real time. As Mike
Downey notes, it's `hand-to-hand combat in its essence. A fight with
civility.'
To wrestle is to enter a different sort of time and space. Time
expands and the outside world fades into a blur. I used to hear it
said that for wrestlers, the only thing that exists in for that
six-minute match is you, your opponent, and God.
I know that feeling, having wrestled in high school, and dabbled a bit
in college. I was never even close to having olympic aspirations, but
I can feel for those who do. The olympics are the pinnacle of amateur
sport. The very best high school and college wrestlers have the
olympics as their ideal-their greatest level of achievement. It's also
the only familiarity most people have with the real sport of
wrestling. Take it out of the Olympics, and `wrestling' may become
synonymous in the public mind with the WWE, Vince McMahan's
counterfeit version.
Not surprisingly, lots of people agree that it's a bad idea. A White
House petition has generated nearly 24,000 signatures, at last check,
and the big names of wrestling are mounting a campaign to save their
sport. Armenia's wrestling head, Levon Julfalakyan, called the
proposal a `betrayal' of the sport. Hopefully this swift, widespread
reaction will prompt a change of heart.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-international-olympic-committee-save-wrestling-as-an-olympic-sport-saveolympicwrestling?utm_campaign=share_button_act ion_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petit ion
Patheos
February 14, 2013
By Kyle Roberts
Cutting the oldest Olympic sport
from the Olympics is a bad idea. But that's exactly what the IOC is
proposing for 2020. Once it is out of the olympics (to make room for
modern pentathalon, wakeboarding, wushu and a few others). I've got
nothing against those sports (I don't know what some of them are), but
I do know that wrestling is one of the oldest sports, dating back to
when Greeks and the Romans started this whole deal. As Rulon Gardner
said recently, when you think of the Olympics, you think marathon and
wrestling. To be fair, you also think of swimming, and gymnastics,
and...well, you get the point.
Wrestling is primal; it's one person's strength, cunning, training,
stamina and will against another's-right there in real time. As Mike
Downey notes, it's `hand-to-hand combat in its essence. A fight with
civility.'
To wrestle is to enter a different sort of time and space. Time
expands and the outside world fades into a blur. I used to hear it
said that for wrestlers, the only thing that exists in for that
six-minute match is you, your opponent, and God.
I know that feeling, having wrestled in high school, and dabbled a bit
in college. I was never even close to having olympic aspirations, but
I can feel for those who do. The olympics are the pinnacle of amateur
sport. The very best high school and college wrestlers have the
olympics as their ideal-their greatest level of achievement. It's also
the only familiarity most people have with the real sport of
wrestling. Take it out of the Olympics, and `wrestling' may become
synonymous in the public mind with the WWE, Vince McMahan's
counterfeit version.
Not surprisingly, lots of people agree that it's a bad idea. A White
House petition has generated nearly 24,000 signatures, at last check,
and the big names of wrestling are mounting a campaign to save their
sport. Armenia's wrestling head, Levon Julfalakyan, called the
proposal a `betrayal' of the sport. Hopefully this swift, widespread
reaction will prompt a change of heart.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-international-olympic-committee-save-wrestling-as-an-olympic-sport-saveolympicwrestling?utm_campaign=share_button_act ion_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petit ion