Wrestling & Olympics: is it just a drama?

Amit Karmarkar
24 February 2013, 12:01 PM IST

I was on the verge of shedding a tear for wrestling's demotion from the core sports of the Olympic Games. There was a feeling of anger about IOC's executive board too for voting the ancient sport out. But slowly, things are looking stage-managed.

The IOC executive board may have felt all 26 sports which came for voting deserved to be on the Games radar in 2020. But according to the procedure, one had to be voted out. And wrestling fits the bill. If they had voted out athletics, swimming, tennis or soccer, they would faced unprecedented ridicule. If they had voted out modern pentathlon, handball or hockey, getting the backdoor entry for those sports from a larger group of members would have been difficult.

Wrestling has a great history. It's not big enough sport to exclude (and invite ridicule) but it's not small either. It is powerful enough to come back without missing the Games. And that could have tilted the balance in its 'favour'.

Of course, it's a theory based on the inference that IOC members are smart but not too smart to be called sophisticated criminals. The point is simple, don't be surprised if wrestling remains on the Games radar or don't applaud if wrestling fraternity fights back and gets their place back. For, it could have been 'designed' that way!

Wrestling is surely one of the mother sports and you don't leave your mother unattended however complicated her existence may have become. Like most great sports, wrestling has got a fascinating thin line between the attack and defence. Its most engrossing part is the variation of body speed. At one point the wrestlers seem to waste time or try to get the measure of each other. But suddenly, the tempo changes, the limbs crash on each other and
you can't help but marvel at the preparation that goes in those nimble-footed yet muscular structures.

Wrestling, boxing, judo and taekwondo are special because it's a battle with yourself and also against your opponent. Athletics and swimming are largely battles within, especially in short-distance races. Though athletics and swimming are "no-excuse" sports, it may not be a battle in a level-playing field.

With weight categories in wrestling (and boxing and their ilk), the physical advantage is evened out. Or not that alarming at least. That could be one of the reasons that in these physical 'contact' sports (since you also have to beat the opponent and not the clock), the doping offenders are relatively small.

Wrestling is one of the basic human traits and it must remain a part of the Olympics. If it doesn't survive for 2020, the sanity of all the members of Olympic movement should be questioned in unparliamentary language and manner.

Of course, to vote out any of those 26 core sports would have been difficult. Thank god, hockey survived. Else dhak dhak (Indian breathing) would have stopped!!

I respect the inventor of modern Olympic Games Baron Pierre de Coubertin and his modern pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, show juming and 3km cross-country). But let's be clear that the modern pentathlon doesn't reward out-and-out excellence. For, the 'non'-champions in the above individual sports compete there as all-rounders. Of course, it requires huge amount of skill. But those skills are nothing as compared to the skills of multiple champions in swimming (like Phelps) who beat the high-level competitors in their respective specialisation (different strokes). I mean Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens are streets ahead of any multiple champion in decathlon or heptathlon. For, the latter competes in a watered-down field by the sheer texture (mixed) of that sport.

The modern pentathlon champions or heptathon champions generally form a footnote of the Olympic history. They are largely unknown and hardly find themselves in the limelight. Maybe that's why these sports evoke charitable emotions!

IF (and that's a big if) there was any sport that needed to be voted out of the core list, it was handball. Though I'm not a true-blue follower of the game, I find its goalkeeper almost redundant. Whenever he moves any ogran (leg, hand, or rear), it doesn't change the course. The goal is scored anyway!

If handball's finances, primetime following or popularity in Europe was too powerful to give it the axe, then the IOC needed to look somewhere else. Maybe to other goal-sports or to other weight-category sports.

There is one positive though: the wrestling fraternity is out of their slumber now who could have taken their presence for granted.

The IOC session will have to vote for the inclusion of one sport to be included for 2020 Games. Some stars sportspersons who are backing squash may not be really backing squash. They prefer it more than baseball/softball, karate, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu. If wrestling gets a backdoor entry, they won't protest.

Similarly, if the IOC session brings back wrestling, you can hardly expect resignation from the IOC executive board!