Thoughts on the IOC recommendation

I'm taking a break from my normal blog style of telling everyone else what I've been up to in my quest to get to the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Rest assured, it’s all good this week but there are more important things to discuss. I promise my break in normal themes hasn’t got anything to do with losing a match 5 – 2 to Michael Cavanagh on Monday. It was a sad day but great fun and absolutely nothing to do with a cracked rib!

International Olympic Committee

Of course the more important thing this week that I’m blogging about is the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) recommendation to remove Wrestling from the Olympic Games after 2020.That recommendation from the IOC has the potential to put Wrestling on the sporting equivalent of the endangered species list. You may think that's a tad dramatic but indulge me for a minute and I'll qualify that statement. 

First of all let’s take a quick look at Wrestling – Wrestling is one of the oldest combat sports in the world. Historians can track wrestling back 15,000 years but most noticeably and most relevant to this news is that Wrestling was the number one sport in the ancient Olympiad and has featured in every modern Olympic Games bar Paris 1900, that’s a pretty impressive track record. In one sense Wrestling has until now withstood the test of time, holds the traditional values and provides a link back to the ancient history of the games themselves.

Egyptian Burial Chamber drawing depicting wrestling from 2400 BC

The Olympics is steeped in tradition, I for one don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on the traditional values and the merits that the individual sports bring to the modern games. Not only that; but let’s look at the popularity of the sport. Those in the UK will say “What? popularity of Wrestling?” well you’d be surprised, there are over 200 countries across the globe where Wrestling is recognised, in the College set up in the US it is the 6^th most popular sport and their High School programmes last year alone had 280,384 participants pushing Wrestling into the top 10 sports. That’s just the US, look at Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Canada and Iran to name but a few and I’ll bet you have a hell of a lot of world wide participants. Granted the UK only had 701 registered Wrestlers last year but there were more who aren’t affiliated to the National Governing Body.

Here are my thoughts - In my view what makes the Olympic Games the greatest sporting competition in the world are the principles that they were founded upon. The Olympic Charter speaks of Olympism. They describe Olympism as a philosophy of life that combine the qualities of mind, body and will, blending sport with culture and education. The Olympic Charter goes on to state that the goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind and that the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic Spirit. 

Unfortunately, In my view I don’t feel the vision and values that the Olympics and the IOC should hold to its core match the current situation that we find ourselves in today. Once upon a time the Olympic Games were about Amateur athletes coming together to compete for their nations but nowadays that’s been lost in the commercialisation of sport. Wrestling lost its place because the IOC deemed there to not be enough global popularity, the volume of ticket sales and its sexiness for a television audience. I’m paraphrasing of course but they could have just said... Money!

I would like to think that because I’ve not been involved in Wrestling for that long, I can take a slightly objective view of their decision but to be frank I think they have made the wrong choice. The IOC are trying to modernise, I get that. It’s essential for every organisation to move with the times, the Olympics is now big business with big sponsors and they can and need to continue to attract big television audiences and ticket sales, how do you maximise TV audiences and Sponsorship? you get the big names from the big team sports but I would argue that its taking away from the whole ethos of the Olympics?

GB had Andy Murray playing tennis, whilst it was great for GB to medal. I watched (on TV) Andy Murray play in the Wimbledon final three weeks prior to the Olympics starting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s done wonders for Tennis, but the question is, did Tennis really need the extra exposure of being an Olympic sport?

The question I would ask to the IOC is why do we need to lose any of the smaller sports, the IOC claim that the cap on sports is to allow for manageable organisation but surely Tennis, Rugby, Football and Golf all have their rightful places away from the Olympics. If I wanted to watch a contest of any of the above sports I could do so easily throughout the year, every year because they all have majors, grand slams, world cups and International Competitions. What’s next Olympic F1?

Save Olympic Wrestling

Back to one of my opening comments, the endangered species. Wrestling has the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, yes it’s got Regional and World Championships in Europe, Asia and the Americas but taking the carrot of the Olympics away from Wrestling would be like taking away the Football World Cup. Wrestling is very much a development / grass roots sport and if you take away something as large as the Olympics, then what do the young one’s have to aspire to. You are almost guaranteed to see the world wide participation rates decline. For those nations not in the Commonwealth, what do they have left on an international profile raising stage?

You have to hope that the people at the IOC have thought about it and aren't just bowing down to the political, corporate and commercial pressures that have been festering within sport over the last few years. The IOC has an obligation to protect the autonomy of sport; that means to keep it independent, to me that means forget the politics and forget the commercialisation and let sport be sport. Let’s hope they see sense and keep Wrestling where it is...where it deserves to be. 


Thanks for taking time out to read

@shocksjr