The
15 member committee of the IOC has made the shocking decision to do
away with wrestling in the 2020 Buenos Aires Olympics. A ridiculous
decision by any parameter, it has rightly sent shock waves in the
sporting world and beyond, as wrestling is the foremost sport for
building strength and athletic prowess.
The reason given by the IOC committee members is that wrestling is “losing its popularity” and does not fit into “modern” times.
Not
popular? Every village in every country across Caucasus and Asia
celebrates its wrestlers as the symbol of the village’s virility and
fortitude. It is popular in the west as well, remaining the fourth or
fifth most participated sport in United States, right from school and
university level (Until World War II, the one sport practiced more than
any other by men who would become president of the United States
including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S.
Grant, Zachary Taylor, William Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin
Coolidge was wrestling).
It
would appear to be so if one looks at it from the urban popular media’s
point of view. It is a view which most of the concepts are severely
distorted like beauty (associated with robot faced skeletal figures that
walk the ramp or makeup caked artificial plastic dolls who think they
are acting on screen ), music (associated with sound mixing and
cacophonic voices made tolerable by studio editing), intellect
(associated with anyone who has a degree from a foreign university and
who excels in emoting blooming nonsense in flowery English), development
(associated with mushrooming of tall buildings, malls and
five star hotels everywhere which end up depleting resources and whose
construction is a convenient way for money laundering). Wrestling too
has not been spared, as the word wrestling for any urban youngster today
brings to the mind not the genuine clash of strength on red soil or on a
gymnasium mat, but the sickening farce called WWE wrestle
mania, which has the audacity of calling itself “free style wrestling”,
where steroid pumped hunks cannot “fight” without bikini clad babes
around them. Not surprisingly then, that most wrestlers come from places
where TRPs or glamour don’t matter at all.
Olympics
were first held in 776 BC in Olympia (hence the name), and became a
quadrennial event from thereon, honouring Zeus. It was adopted by the
Romans when they won the Greeks, but they were discontinued in 394 AD by
the now Christian Roman Empire (by Theodosius I). It wouldn’t be
revived for nearly fifteen centuries till the IOC under Baron Pierre de
Coubertin revived it in 1896. The modern Olympic games revived the
ancient tradition by adopting the main events of the ancient games viz
wrestling, running, discus throw, javelin throw, boxing . The rest of
the sports invented in those fifteen centuries came next. Wrestling
always was the most celebrated sport of ancient Olympics and it is an
imperative part of the modern games as well. Any attempt to tamper with
it will mutilate the identity of Olympics, whose motto says Citius,
Altius , Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger). What sport could represent
fortius more than wrestling? Any fighter in the immensely popular MMA
(Mixed Martial Arts) is primarily a wrestler. Wrestling goes way beyond
sports and has been the primary combat training technique for soldiers
since time immemorial. The very concept of self defence is incomplete
without it. Removing it would take “stronger” out of the Olympics .
It’s
an illogical scenario where pansy stuff like handball and waterpolo
find a place in Olympics but wrestling is threatened. The committee is
mulling to reintroduce things like golf in its place .Well, dear IOC,
why just stop at introducing golf? Introduce Hopscotch, Tag you’re it,
Hide & Seek, Musical Chairs, kite flying as well. Once upon a time,
even croquet and lacrosse were introduced, isn’t it?
As for not being modern, it is understandable that manliness is seen as something regressive and is spat
upon in every conceivable way by the feminist dominated media with its
femme fatale avengers who in the name of political correctness somehow
have to bring down every man they come across. But exclude manliness
from sport and you will see a strapping youth turn into a crippled
hunchback in an instant. And Wrestling as a sport is
crippled in this world of razzle dazzle, because it simply does not have
a governing body like FIFA, UEFA, ICC, NBA or ATP to do its bidding.
It
is therefore left to the countries where wrestling is a rich tradition
(India, Iran, Russia, Central Asian Republics, Cuba etc) to spare no
efforts lobbying and pressurizing the IOC to reverse this uncalled for
decision of theirs. If China and South Korea can have Badminton and
Table Tennis included from 1988 onwards to boost their medal tally,
there should be no reason why this collective effort shouldn’t be
successful.
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