By Nate West
News Editor
The times they are a changin’.
The lyrics to the famous Bob Dylan song ring true lately. For the first time in almost 600 years, a pope is resigning from his papal duties and in 2020, for the first time since 708 B.C., wrestling will not be included in the Olympic Games, according to a Jan. 2 article on olympic.org.
That will be 2728 years of tradition coming to a close once the Games commence.
“In an effort to ensure the Olympic Games remain relevant to sports fans of all generations, the Olympic Programme Commission systematically reviews every sport following each edition of the Games,” according to the same article.
To say wrestling isn’t a relevant sport is absurd. While programs like SportsCenter or ESPNNews may not cover much wrestling, it’s still a staple in the sporting world.
The Olympics are as much about tradition as they are about entertainment. Wrestling and track and field are two of oldest sports in the games. It’s an insult to tradition to drop wrestling from the greatest two weeks sports have to offer.
In high school, some of my good friends wrestled, and I’ve never seen people commit to a sport so wholeheartedly. I can barely miss a meal, so the idea of going days with minimal food to make weight is beyond my comprehension. But wrestlers do it for weeks, months sometimes, all for the sport they love.
But whether the athletes love the sport isn’t the issue. It comes back to the sport not being “relevant” enough to viewers for them to keep it.
In 2011, there were 273,732 boys and 7,351 girls in high school wrestling programs in the United States alone, according to a themat.com article. It was the sixth-most popular boys sport in the country, ahead of tennis, golf and swimming & diving all of which were included in the London 2012 games and are still scheduled to be in the 2020 games.
It’s almost comical that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) thinks wrestling isn’t relevant enough to remain an Olympic sport. Wrestling arguably set up the foundation for other contact sports like football and boxing.
The decision to drop it as an Olympic sport was done via secret ballot at the IOC’s headquarters in Switzerland, according to the New York Times.
It’s sad that such a classic event is going to come to an end. Hopefully, the members of the IOC can come to their senses and reinstate it as a sport.
