Olympics To Drop Wrestling?

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.”

according to nytimes.com