Wrestling, and the high-handedness of Olympic proportions

So what qualifies a sport to be a part of the Olympics? The charter on the website of the International Olympic Committee website says that “only sports widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in at least 40 countries and on three continents may be included in the Summer Games. Sports widely practiced in at least 25 countries and three continents may be included in the Olympic Winter Games.”

Is that really so? I would seriously be interested to know how many people outside Eastern Europe “widely practise” the modern pentathlon. Or how that elitist sport called golf made an entry into the 2016 Olympics. If we were to stretch the argument further, how could most of these sports have ever been played at the Olympics?

And they decided to remove wrestling, of all sports. It would be difficult to find seven countries, leave aside 75, where wrestling is not “widely practised”. It is one of the earliest forms of combat, and hence one of the most primal forms of sport. The key lies in something else.

Wrestling is not one of the most “widely watched” sports, in terms of TRP and TAM ratings. Even the IOC’s programme commission has admitted to this by going on record to say that any decision with respect to the removal and/or entry/re-entry of a sport is assessed by looking at factors such as TV ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping and global popularity.

And you would probably have to give it to them here. What is the fun in watching two half-nude males tussling it out with each other on a multi-coloured floor? Of course, the same cannot be said of the female version of the sport, but then again, Playboy models do not compete in the Olympics. And it isn’t even an intellectual sport like chess which provides orgasmic pleasure to its viewers as they contemplate the long drawn-out moves of man vs man (sometimes machine) on the silver screen. Chess might fit into the IOC’s reconstructed agenda provided it crosses the 75/50 penetration barrier which I am sure it must have – after all, what does it take to play chess? But wrestling is considered to be too passe.

This is sad, considering the fact that wrestling had been a blue riband event of the Olympics since the times of Pierre de Coubertin and much before. In ancient Greece, the masses, the elite and the intelligentsia were attracted to the sport, and its fan following included the likes of Plato. In fact, the name “Plato” comes from the Greek adjective for “broad”, so one never knows what his priorities were at one point of time.

And for all the modernists sniggering at the puritanical aspects of the sport, let me bring to your notice the sport of ‘professional’ wrestling. Long before T20 upped the glamour quotient and “watchability” of a supposedly draconian game, we had the likes of the WWE (for the old-timers, it’s still the WWF and the TNA). In twenty-odd years, pro wrestling has knowingly or unknowingly done that for the sport which the IOC could not do in over 100 years – it has sexed up the game. As an adult, two men strutting around in spandex tights provoking each other would seem cartoonish, but it is THE thing for a twelve-year old. And even if this did not grab your attention, then the mention of Trish Stratus and Stacy Kiebler would.

So what’s so wrong about this game that it has to be removed from the Olympics? If anyone were to tell me that golf brings in more advertising revenue than wrestling, I would pay for his or her psychiatrist’s fees. The reason is something far more simple.

The only four sports which have been a part of the modern Olympics since its inception are athletics, cycling, fencing and gymnastics – all predominantly European or Western sports. The next sport on the IOC’s waitlist for elimination – taekwondo, which originated in Korea and is practised predominantly by the Oriental countries.

As for wrestling, it is one of the sports where India has been finding its feet in recent years with a silver and two bronzes in the last two Olympics. Not just India, but wrestling is currently dominated by the likes of Russia, Japan, Iran, Azerbaijan (who, between them, secured thirteen of the fifteen golds in wrestling in the last Olympics), Uzbekistan and China. Good reason then to nip it in the bud.

As for those who consider me to be a conspiracy theorist, I would ask for one good reason why cricket, especially in the T20 format, has never been considered for the Olympics (since that one-off farce in Paris 1900) despite having 10 full, 30 and 60 affiliate member countries – or has it got something to do with “widely practised”? If that is the case, then pray why is not paintball even in the frame despite being one of the most popular sports across the globe? The answers lie with the IOC Executive Board.

I’m not sure if we can do anything about this. What we can do is take a moment out from our busy lives and think about the fates of those who have spent most of their youth training for an elusive Olympic medal and will now have to reconcile to the fact that they are not even eligible to participate.