Posted on 02/12/2013 11:10:28 AM PST by BenLurkin
Tags: IOC, 2020 Olympics, Daniel Cormier
LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games.
The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon -- the event considered most at risk -- and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 "core sports."
The IOC board acted after reviewing the 26 sports on the current Olympic program. Eliminating one sport allows the International Olympic Committee to add a new sport to the program later this year.
Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.
"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "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."
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
Interesting stuff. Very “real world”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration
Another IOC sucks moment! Wrestling to be replaced by some baton twirling gay game? Something the Chinese can compete in without turning their female athletes into men maybe?
Shall I continue?
It took 34 replies to have someone mention my favorite "sport" of curling. < /sarc>
Wrestling is just too violent of a sport. These violent activities must end. Don’t you know.
Do they ever play on grass or clay?
A necessary venue for passing out free condoms?
The 6 people who still follow modern pentathlon must have bribed the IOC some major $$$. Jim Thorpe won Gold in MP in 1912 and no one has cared since
Grass ping pong table?
The Olympics was so much that was good. It was a search for excellence in the human activities, the search for honor, and a search for competition for its own sake.
If you walk next to the original Olympic Stadium which still stands, you see a row of statues, names still visible carved into the bases, not to the victors to memorialize the greatness of their accomplishments, but rather to the cheaters, to record forever the shame of their cheating. The shame was eternal.
The winners received laurels which were wreaths around their heads to wear on the way home and thus show the honors of their victories. The gift was of fleeting moment, but the highest personal honor.
Now, we honor the winners with modern day statues in the forms of gifts of money and contracts, to try to give them everlasting fame, and we fleetingly shame the cheaters by giving them a temporary thistle of shame, which withers, dies and blows away, never to be remembered.
The Olympics were to compete in a field of honor, and politics were set aside, so as to allow safe passage through enemy territory for the purpose of the competition and for safe return.
Now, the politics guide the Olympics, wars are not suspended for their ceremony, and it is nothing more than a commercial enterprise on an international scale.
I am sad that wrestling has ended, but I am more sad that the Olympic Spirit died long ago, anyway.
As go the Olympics, so goes civilization, one a mirror of the other.
It’s a totally different game. ;-)
I can’t help but think that they think wrestling is to masculine to be an internationally competitive sport.
As a former wrestler, I heard that thought expressed frequently.
However, it is queer like hand-to-hand combat is queer.
The original purpose of the Olympic Competitions was to permit the contestants to seek excellence in the battle skills, and to test the abilities among the warriors.
If you believe the training of a warrior is queer, then I guess wrestling is queer.
At least, one could say that the goal was to F you up. Context, however, is key.
I cant help but think that they think wrestling is to masculine to be an internationally competitive sport
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Probably dropping it before the ‘ladies’ make a serious attempt to join.
However, I remember some of those E. German LADIES(?) and would imagine the majority of them could hold their own??
That would make it join the ‘old VN logic - We must destroy the ‘village’ in order to save it’.
That would be pretty close to "Modern Pentathlon" and is already an Olympic event, though not well televised at all.
Between this and iron being replaced in Monopoly by the cat, I’m ready to go watch some dog fighting I’m so mad.
The Olympic Games ended in the early seventies. Mexico City was the end; and it hasn’t been pretty since. Let ‘em go and save the poor, beleaguered taxpayers around the world their hard-earned money.
I suspect this has something to do with the feminization of the Olympics. No real man watches rhythmic gymnastics or synchronized swimming. Last summer while watching the Olympics I mentioned to my wife what a joke sport synchonized swimming is. She got a little testy. Apparently a lot of women think “sports” like that are legitimate. What’s next...rhythmic-synchronized pole dancing?
1. Dressage is not a core sport, it's part of esquatarics.
2. Dressage is a demonstration of the skill of controlling a war/cavalry horse. It meets the Spirit of the Olympics: The Art of the Warrior. It should stay.
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