Wrestling has had a rocky path getting to the Olympic Games in Rio. Just a few months following the 2012 London Olympic Games, The International Olympic Committee voted to ouster wrestling as an Olympic sport starting in 2020.
Wrestling was faced with a serious conundrum: the IOC decided to drop wrestling from the summer Olympics because they decided they no longer had time for all 26 core sports. Long history didn’t really factor into the decision as much as poor viewership numbers. Luckily, FILA later renamed itself to United World Wrestling managed to edge out other sports and secure a non-core sport spot.
Rio 2016 will be the first Olympic games since UWW promised to make the sport easier to understand and more fun for the typical couch potato audience. Wrestling matches used to consist of 3 periods with no added scoring. The winner was decided based on who won more periods. Now each match has two 3 minute sections with cumulative scoring in order to cut down on passivity.
Another innovation? 6 weight classes for all wrestling events – meaning men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle and men’s Greco-Roman.
The singlet rules have also changed – now they will come in flag colors as opposed to the old fashioned red and blue.
Low viewership numbers might surprise a casual observer because the biggest portion of the audience comes from the leader in wrestling medals – USA. However the Greco-Roman category hasn’t had an American winner in quite a while – since 2000.
Women’s wrestling might offer an interesting new frontier given the expansion of number of weight classes. Previously this discipline was dominated by Japan but we might just live to be surprised – both Adeline Gray and 2015 champ Helen Maroulis hope to end their streak.
Jordan Burroughs has been quite vocal about wanting to become a repeat Olympic Gold medalist – the first since John Smith in 1992.
Kaori Icho (Japan) has his own goals! He is seeking to become the first wrestler to win 3 straight Olympic gold medals. She has dominated the women’s wrestling at 58kg since 2003 with a 189 match winning streak over 13 years. That is until the 32 year old was defeated by Orkhon Purevdorzh for the Golden Grand Prix this past January.
Kyle Snyder is the youngest US wrestling competitor. At the ripe old age od 20 he hopes to become the youngest American olympic gold medalist in wrestling.
Abdulrashid Sadulaev will be competing at 86kg and he seems to be the favorite after winning the last two world championships. In fact he is so impressive that he only gave away total 4 points in those two world championships. He will face harsh competition from Turkey’s Selim Yasar and Cuban Reineris Salas.
All the while a large shadow is cast above the Russian Olympic Wrestlers. Freestyle wrestler Viktor Lebedev, a former 2x World Champion in the 55kh class has been excluded from the list of Olympic athletes following a positive doping test a decade ago:
“Per regulations set by the IOC, Viktor Lebedev was not cleared for consideration due to a positive doping test at the 2006 Junior World Championships. Mr Lebedev’s qualification spot has been replaced by the nation of the next best-ranked wrestler from his qualification tournament (2015 World Championships). That nation is Belarus.”
