Olympics: Wrestling the loser in the battle between tradition and ratings

Last week's controversial decision by the IOC to eliminate wrestling from the Olympics has raised the perennial question of what defines an Olympic sport, leading to the question of what the Olympic Games are supposed to be. Is the IOC supposed to be upholding tradition or showcasing the world's most popular sports? Do the games need to work to stay relevant to younger generations or will those generations come to them? Tradition, popularity, money, television ratings, gender equality, politics, diplomacy, how should these factors balance against each other? There are no easy answers.

The exclusion of wrestling from the Olympics is a defeat for tradition. The sport was part of the original Olympics, and portrayals of wrestling are amongst the iconic images of of the ancient games. This is not a reason to keep the sport on its own, chariot racing has not survived to the present day, but combined with its history of being part of every modern games apart from 1900, it feels like a part of the identity of the games.

The decision seems to have been based on a desire to modernise the games, to make them more popular internationally, and to appeal to a younger audience. Those are reasonable intentions, a desire to keep the Olympic movement alive for future generations. Television ratings and money are necessary in order to fund their ongoing existence, so pursuing those is no great evil.

A number of sports are campaigning for inclusion in its place: baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu. Presumably the IOC feels that at least one of these has a greater international and generational appeal. Nonetheless, sports come and go in popularity, and it would be a mistake to throw one that has lasted as long as wrestling has, for another that has yet to prove whether it has lasting power.

Photo by Inkysloth via Flickr

The risk is that in race for survival, the games change so much that they lose their identity and dilute their brand, until they are lost in the international sporting landscape. Moreover, there seems to be no immediate need to make those sorts of compromises, viewing figures have never been higher, the games have never been more popular around the world, the era of boycotts and financial uncertainty in the 70s and 80s, when hosting the games was undesirable to many nations, has been replaced by an era when countries around the globe go to great lengths to accommodate the IOC, changing laws and making financial guarantees. It should then be possible to accommodate some modernity, such as the inclusion of BMX and kayaking, without compromising the history of the Olympic brand, and the sports that give the games their connection with the past.

All is not lost though, wrestling will now compete with those other sports for the spot that it has vacated, at a vote to be held in September. In part two of this post, the equation that wrestling faces is explored.