IOC adds golf and drops wrestling from the Olympics

[jmc247]

The International Olympic Committee is dropping wrestling from competition after the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, the result of some elaborate secret ballot it holds every so often to determine its 25 "core sports."

In part because golf and rugby are coming to the Olympics, something had to go. As such, both freestyle (somewhat similar to what you see in American high schools and colleges) and Greco Roman, each of which dated back to the 1896 Games in Greece, will soon be history. Wrestling can try to get back in, but the odds are long.

One of the problems with the IOC is that its history of rampant corruption makes any of its decisions suspect. Who knows why each voter voted as they did, but it doesn't take much of a skeptic to think this was a political – and thus graft-filled – process. Each sport was forced to campaign for itself and, thus, against the others.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympic...201325406.html

A sport as old as human history that is done the world over and was one of the most popular sports of the original Olympic games gets killed by a bunch of corrupt pansy bureaucrats. This is shameful and I would say the same thing about the decision even if I hadn't wrestled in high school and college.

[Sheep]

I doubt you'll hear much of an argument from many considering some of the shit that is passed off as sport in the Olympics.

[jmc247]

Sheep wrote:

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I doubt you'll hear much of an argument from many considering some of the shit that is passed off as sport in the Olympics.

You mean like Dressage also known as horse dancing which Mitt Romney's horse competed in last year... a 'sport' where the horse and rider are expected to perform a series of predetermined movements and are rated based on their 'dance'.

[Kronos]

Just like with baseball and softball, the IOC gets it wrong again.

[throwback]

I agree with the comedian George Carlin's comments on golf. I agree with him 100%.

I've got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem. I know where we can build housing for the homeless: golf courses! It’s perfect! Just what we need. Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white, well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer amongst themselves. I am getting tired, really getting tired, of these golfing c-rs in their green pants, and their yellow pants, and their orange pants, and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts! It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless! Golfing is a arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country. Too much room’ in this country! It is an arrogant game on its very design alone, just the design of the game speaks of arrogance. Think of how big a golf course is – the ball is that f-g big! What do these pin-headed pricks need with all that land?! There are over seventeen thousand golf courses in America, they average over one hundred and fifty acres a piece – that’s three million plus acres, four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles – you could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist, there’s another thing; the only blacks you’ll find at country clubs are carrying trays. And a boring game. A boring game for boring people. You ever watch golf on television? It’s like watching flies f-k! And a mindless game, mindless. Think of the intellect it must take, to draw pleasure from this activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it! And then, hitting it again! I say pick it up a-e, you’re lucky you found the f-g thing! Put it in your pocket and go home, you’re a winner! You’ve found it! No chance of that happening. Dork-o in the plaid knickers is going to hit it again and walk some more. Let these rich c-rs play miniature golf! Let them f-k with a windmill for an hour and a half or so! See if there’s any real skill among these people. Now I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich. F-K ‘EM! And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist passtime.

[jmc247]

In the U.S. and Western Europe wrestling has lost alot of the support it had a century ago (when it was one of the main sports of that era) to other things that TV viewers find more easy to watch and understand.

In the 18th and 19th century wrestling was one of the top 3 sports in Western Europe and America. George Washington wrestled as did Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and many many other top members of American as well as European society. In the first half of the 20th century a number of new sports like American football certainly rose and overtook it, but it was still considered the most manly of the sporting endevors so you had the likes of George Patton, Norman Schwarzkopf, Dwight Eisenhower, John McCain, and many other names people know all too well who wrestled.

Then Title IX managed to do a body blow to American wrestling. By mandating equal numbers of men and women in college sports it created a situation where the most popular male sport which took up a huge number of male slots (Football) was not going to be cut so schools had to make more female sports teams and/or kill other male sports teams and wrestling in colleges around the country took a massive hit. That has been slowly turning around by the way as more schools have of late been bringing it back as things like female wrestling teams have started to take off allowing schools to comply with Title IX and have male wrestling at the same time.

The other biggest problem wrestling has had in the second half of the 20th century to now is that its not as sexy to watch on TV (where the big money is) for your average viewer as most other sports are because most people don't know the rules and in a fast pace sport like wrestling if you haven't done it yourself and don't know the rules it just comes off like men grabbing each other and rolling around.

Ultimate Fighting though is simple enough for the layman to understand which is why its popular on TV in a way real wrestling is not right now. Oh and Professional Wrestling is a joke that is half acting and half soap opera. But, its easy to understand for the layman when a person calls out someone else as a wuss and starts macking on his girlfriend and then gets hit by the other guy with a chair in pre-staged acting routine.

That said wrestling in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and even large parts of South America is still extremely popular. It doesn't take the resources to do as golf and many other things popular in the U.S. and Western Europe. What the IOC is thinking about is TV ratings in the U.S. and Western Europe which is where the big money comes in. They don't give a damn that wrestling is one of the few sports done just about everywhere and that is one of the top sports outside Western Europe and the United States.

[Roger Wilco]

I don't follow wrestling, and I rarely watched it during the Olympics, but I'm totally shocked by this decision, especially for the reasons stated. Why not make Lingerie Football an Olympic sport or Pro Cocksucking if all you care about are the tv ratings? This will destroy the sport of wrestling worldwide, except maybe in the USA, congrats IOC...

[MacLeod]

Events which make up the Modern Olympics games have changed over the 117 or so years of the games have been going. So events have been dropped before, nothing new there. Do I watch wrestling, no nor do I really watch Golf either (except for maybe the Ryder Cup).

So the wrestling fans won't be happy is been dropped, but the Golf fans will be happy that's been added.

You can't please everyone all of the time.

[Shazam!]

I blame the lack of gimmicks and believable angles.

[Danny99]

How did that ribbon twirling "sport" survive over wrestling?

[CorporalCaptain]

[Sheep]

jmc247 wrote:

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You mean like Dressage also known as horse dancing which Mitt Romney's horse competed in last year... a 'sport' where the horse and rider are expected to perform a series of predetermined movements and are rated based on their 'dance'.

That's an Olympic event?? I was thinking of events like racewalking, personally.

[scotpens]

throwback wrote:

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I agree with the comedian George Carlin's comments on golf. I agree with him 100%.

Not one of Carlin's better rants, IMHO. Angry, ignorant, and just unfunny.

Now, Robin Williams knew how to be funny about golf.

[iguana_tonante]

I like Graeco-Roman wrestling and I am sad to see it out of the Olympics for its historical significance, but I cannot help but laugh at jmc's rant how it's a the manliest sport, befitted of American presidents and war generals above "horse dancing" and such effeminate activities, and it's all the feminists' fault.

[Alidar Jarok]

Kronos wrote:

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Just like with baseball and softball, the IOC gets it wrong again.

Well, baseball made at least some degree of sense because the best players didn't come close to playing for it, so the quality wasn't as good as it should be.

Wrestling goes back to fucking ancient Greece. It was one of the first sports revived when the Olympics returned. For it's heritage alone, wrestling needs to be a core sport. I don't care if literally no one watches it, it should still be there. The Olympics is supposed to be about more than television ratings and money, so they should suck it up.