Olympic Fixture Since 708 B.C. Will Be Dropped Because Of Greedy USA Democrats

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/sports/olympics-may-drop-wrestling-in-
2020.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

By JER� LONGMAN

Wrestling, one of the earliest and most elemental Olympic sports, was
dropped from the Summer Games on Tuesday in a stunning and widely
criticized decision by the International Olympic Committee.

Apart from track and field, wrestling is considered by many the oldest
competitive sport, one that made its first appearance at the ancient
Olympic Games in 708 B.C. and thrives on its rudimentary attractiveness �
one athlete trying to subdue another, not with equipment but with the
fundamental use of the arms, upper body and legs.

Yet it was precisely the traditional nature of wrestling that appeared to
doom it. A shift in priority has occurred in an era of outsize television
contracts as Olympic officials seek to add more telegenic sports and more
widely visible stars in hopes of maintaining a sense of relevance,
modernity and youthfulness in the Winter and the Summer Games.

Both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling will be contested at the 2016
Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, but they will be excluded from the 2020 Summer
Games, for which a host city has not yet been named, the I.O.C. said
Tuesday.

The decision to drop wrestling was made by secret ballot by the Olympic
committee�s 15-member executive board at its headquarters in Lausanne,
Switzerland. The exact vote and the reasons for the decision were not
given in detail.

There is a chance that the Olympic Committee could reverse its decision in
May, when it considers a 26th sport to add to the 2020 Games. A final
decision will be made in September, but wrestling�s immediate Olympic
future seemed doubtful, according to veteran observers of the Games.

In recent years, the I.O.C. has expressed concern about the growing size
of the Summer Games and has wanted to cap the number of athletes at about
10,500. It has also said that it wants to attract younger viewers to the
international television audience. On Tuesday, the committee said in a
statement that it wanted to ensure that it remained �relevant to sports
fans of all generations.�

Olympic-style wrestling, with its amateur roots and absence of visibility
except during the Games, does not have superstars with widespread
international acclaim like Lionel Messi in soccer, Kobe Bryant in
basketball, Tiger Woods in golf and Usain Bolt in track. And in the United
States, the popularity of Olympic-style wrestling is surpassed by the
staged bombast of professional wrestling.

Sports like snowboarding have been added to the Winter Games to broaden
their appeal. Golf and rugby will return at the 2016 Rio Games after long
absences. Among the sports that wrestling must compete with for future
inclusion are rock climbing, rollerblading and wakeboarding.

The I.O.C. may have also grown frustrated that Greco-Roman wrestling did
not include women, experts said. Women began participating in freestyle
wrestling at the 2004 Athens Games.

Politics, too, play an inevitable role in the workings of the I.O.C. Among
the sports surviving Tuesday�s vote was modern pentathlon, also
threatened, and less popular internationally than wrestling. But modern
pentathlon, a five-event sport that includes shooting, horseback riding
and running, was invented by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the
modern Games. And it is supported by Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., son of a
former I.O.C. president and a member of its executive board.

Mark Adams, a spokesman for the I.O.C., told reporters in Lausanne that
Tuesday�s vote was a �process of renewing and renovating the program for
the Olympics.�

He added: �In the view of the executive board, this was the best program
for the Olympic Games in 2020. It�s not a case of what�s wrong with
wrestling, it is what�s right with the 25 core sports.�

Wrestling�s world governing body, known by its initials as FILA and based
in Switzerland, said it was �greatly astonished� by Tuesday�s decision and
would take �all necessary measures� to persuade the I.O.C. to keep the
sport in the Summer Games.

The vote to eliminate Olympic wrestling produced immediate and widespread
criticism.

�I think this is a really stupid decision,� the Olympic historian David
Wallechinsky said, noting that wrestling �was in the ancient Olympics.�

He added: �It has been in the modern Olympics since 1896. In London, 29
different countries won medals. This is a popular sport.�

Wrestling seemed in many ways to be the perfect Olympic sport. It is as
basic as running; it has broad global appeal, with governing bodies in 180
countries and a power base that extends from the United States to Russia
to Japan to India to Iran; and it is contested in a small area that is
easily depicted on TV. Perhaps most important, the Olympics are considered
wrestling�s ultimate competition, which is not the case in soccer and in
basketball.

Through the years, Olympic wrestling has provided a number of stirring
moments, perhaps none that surpassed the shocking Greco-Roman victory by
Rulon Gardner of the United States over the heavily favored Aleksandr
Karelin of Russia � who had not lost in 13 years � at the 2000 Sydney
Games.

�When you think of the Olympics, you think of wrestling,� said Cael
Sanderson, the wrestling coach at Penn State and a 2004 Olympic freestyle
champion. �It was a marquee event in ancient Greece and in the modern
Games. After running, it was the next sport to be part of the Games. Like
track and field, the Olympics are the highest level. Some sports, it�s
just not as special.�

The dropping of wrestling delivered another blow to the United States,
which has recently lost medal chances in baseball and softball, which have
also been dropped from the Olympics. American wrestlers have won more than
100 medals at the Games.

�I don�t think anybody thought this would happen,� said Gardner, who also
won a bronze in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2004 Athens Games. �It�s a
shame. This is one of the original sports. It�s been around for thousands
of years. The Olympic movement has gone astray. It�s moving in the
direction, not of history but of ratings. Is it about mainstream and
money, or is it about amateur sports competing at the highest level on the
world stage?�

Some wrestling officials said that FILA needed to change the sport quickly
to retain any chance of future inclusion in the Olympics. Modern
pentathlon, for instance, has reduced its competition from four or five
days to one.

�We need to make some drastic changes in the sport, make it more
attractive, especially for TV audiences,� Mikhail Mamiashvili, the
president of the Russian wrestling federation and a 1988 Olympic gold
medalist in Greco-Roman competition, told Reuters.

Mike Novogratz, the team leader for the United States freestyle team at
the London Games, said that wrestling did not have influence with the
Olympic Committee�s executive board, whose power is concentrated in
Western Europe. Wrestling is more popular in Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, Asia and the United States.

�This wasn�t a decision of thought; this was a decision of friends,� said
Novogratz, who is the chairman of the United States Wrestling Foundation
and is a principal and member of the board of directors of the Fortress
Investment Group LLC.

Novogratz also said that FILA had �dropped the ball and did not do a good
enough job selling the merits of wrestling to the I.O.C.� He said,
however, that he expected a �loud and aggressive response� from those in
international wrestling.

Online petitions were being signed to try to save Olympic wrestling. Bruce
Baumgartner, a two-time Olympic champion in freestyle wrestling who is now
the athletic director at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, said: �I
know that wrestling is a strong sport around the world. It�s not just the
U.S. and Russia. It�s a confusing, sad day for me. But I�ve been around
the Olympic movement for a long time. It�s not over �til it�s over.�

While wrestling remains popular at the high school level in the United
States, and has added teams at the Division II and Division III college
level, officials said, it has struggled at the Division I level with
budget constraints and what some supporters say are requirements for
gender equity. The loss of Olympic participation would hurt financing for
USA Wrestling, the national governing body, and probably hasten the
sport�s decline.

�When you have your Super Bowl every four years, if you take that away,
that�s a scary thing,� said Sanderson, the Penn State coach.


--
Barack Obama, reelected by the dumbest and most fearful people in the
history of the United States of America.

Eric Holder, racist black murdering United States Attorney General, still
has his job.

Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to
improper vetting of Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama, a confirmed
felon using SSAN 042-68-4425, belonging to a dead man.

Obama ignored the brutal killing of an American diplomat in Benghazi, then
relieved American military officers who attempted to prevent said murder
in order to cover up his own ineptness.

Obama continues his goal of disarming America after known mentally
disturbed liberal Adam Peter Lanza killed 20 school children and 6 adults
in Sandy Hook Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Every single liberal
inspired and authored gun control law in existence failed to prevent this
tragedy.

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