Why the struggle? Why then did you choose to dismiss from class one of the oldest Olympic sports, the first traces of which date back to 3000 BC? There is no need to search the soul of the IOC leaders to find the answer. It is written, in full, in the press release published on the front page of the official website of the Fédération Internationale des Luttes Associés (FILA). We can read the following text: “FILA learned with great amazement of the recommendation issued today by the IOC Executive Board not to include wrestling in the core of the 25 main sports on the program of the 2020 Olympic Games.”
Stupefaction. Wrestling learned with “astonishment” that its future would not be Olympic. So she didn't know she was threatened. No one, at the IOC or those close to the institution, had warned its leaders. The rumor, for months, always cited the same two sports: taekwondo and modern pentathlon. The struggle, never. The proof: its elected officials were in Bangkok, for a congress, at the time when the 15 members of the IOC Executive Board were settling the fate of their discipline. The absentees were wrong. It is even tempting to think that they were only wrong.
Conversely, the modern pentathlon had made the journey en masse. Several witnesses say they observed Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, the son of the former IOC president, going from group to group to explain that his sport (the Spaniard is vice-president of the International Federation) could not disappear since it belongs to History, having been invented by Pierre de Coubertin himself. A Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. who joined the executive commission in 2012, at the right time to defend his sport, at the risk of creating an obvious conflict of interest.
Taekwondo leaders had also invested in Lausanne to make their voices heard. Like those in the modern pentathlon, they had multiplied initiatives in recent months to save their skin, going so far as to use the services of Jon Tibbs and Associates, an agency specializing in Olympic affairs. According to sources close to the matter, five sports were cited during the first two of the seven rounds of voting by the IOC Executive Board on Tuesday February 12: wrestling, taekwondo, field hockey, canoeing and modern pentathlon. In the final, decisive round, 8 of the 14 voting members (Jacques Rogge did not take part in the vote) nominated wrestling, with modern pentathlon and taekwondo receiving 3 votes each.
Since then, the fight has been organized. The FILA Bureau will meet in Phuket, Thailand, on February 16-17 to decide on further action. In the United States, several petitions were posted on the White House website, one of which calls for pressure on the IOC to reinstate wrestling in the 2020 Games. In a few hours it gathered more than 14 signatures. . In Japan, the National Olympic Committee officially opposed the IOC's decision. In Turkey, the vice-president of FILA, Ahmet Ayik, considers it “impossible” that the fight could disappear. “A commission of 000 people cannot decide alone to wipe us off the map,” he suggests. At the IOC, anything is possible.
