The Olympic future of wrestling will perhaps be played out on politics. Since its threat of exclusion from the Games from 2020, the discipline has discovered strong support at the highest level of power. At the top of the list is Russian President Vladimir Putin. A series of supports of which its practitioners were surely unaware until then, accustomed to operating in a certain media indifference.
In recent days, resistance has also been organizing in the American Congress. A group of senators was formed, under the leadership of Democrat Sherrod Brow (Ohio), to try to change the position of the IOC executive board. Bringing together Democratic as well as Republican elected officials, he wrote a very official letter to Jacques Rogge in the hope of convincing him to reconsider the proposal to exclude wrestling from the Games program.
The action of these senators is supported by another elected representative of weight on the American political scene, Republican Jim Jordan, also from Ohio and member of the House of Representatives. Former wrestling champion in his high school and student years, twice NCAA champion, Jim Jordan said he was determined to throw all his weight into supporting the fight of wrestling.
A lost cause? Not sure. In recent weeks, the fight has been organized all over the world. In Istanbul, the Minister of Sports, Suat Kilic, took advantage of the visit to Turkey of the IOC evaluation commission to repeat his disapproval, and that of his entire country, regarding the threat of the Olympic institution to withdraw the one of the oldest sports in the program. The Japanese did the same earlier in the month. A rare consensus.
