[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

IOC drops wrestling from 2020 Olympics
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...02-12-09-17-54

I would say than it's a weird choice, wrestling might not be that much popular now, but it's still one of the sports than are related to the original olympic, no ?

I think that's a very strange choice as well. As you say, this is one of the "classical" sports and should be a part of anything going by the name of "olympics."

I suspect it's all about money, especially that $1.4 billion from NBC for the rights to 2020 alone.

The board voted after reviewing a report by the IOC program commission report that analyzed 39 criteria, including television ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity.

The article says there were 344 participants in eighteen wrestling events in 2012. Surely that's enough participation?

I wish the article had listed all 25 "core sports" from which wrestling will be excluded. Limiting the discussion to other potential dismissals like field hockey doesn't give us a good picture of the sports the IOC thinks are "core."

Update: I just happened by the New York Times site. As you might imagine, the comments about this decision are uniformly negative.