Vacations, Competitions and Operations

Vacation time - Alvor, Portugal

Right then... I've given you all six weeks off from reading the Blog and now its time to get back into things. I've been pretty busy, same old stuff really nothing much has changed, I say that but when I think about it I have been doing a lo and keeping myself out of bother. I'm still working, wrestling, eating, sleeping and I've been on Holiday. I had a pretty chilled out week in Portugal at the start of September. It was pretty awesome and the place we were staying had a gym that wasn't really used by anyone except for me and a couple of locals, so I managed to keep some training up! Lots of swimming, which was great because it's taught the little guy how to swim. A really nice family holiday was pretty good to recharge the batteries both physically and mentally. 

On to wrestling - - - First thing to tell you all about is (in case you have been in your own world) last month the IOC unsurprisingly decided to reinstate Wrestling into the Olympic programme, was it ever really in doubt? possibly, but more of a wake up call for the sport than anything else I think. it was a pretty comprehensive victory for the sport but you have to feel for squash and karate, particularly squash, that's three attempts to get to the Olympics and a lot of money spent for not a great deal of return. Of course, great news for Wrestling though! I think the IOC would have been hard pressed to justify getting rid of one of the ancient Olympic sports in replace for sports like Golf, Tennis, Football, Rugby 7's but I've mentioned that previously so no need to dwell, its back and that's the main thing.

Second, the Tryst Lions Open at the end of September. I had two bouts and lost two, it was pretty disappointing but as I found, you live and learn from these experiences. I felt great prior to going, training had been going well and I was feeling really strong, my weight programme from Alex was doing the job well. My first bout was against Ewan Maddox, a good friend of mine who is also a potential Commonwealth Games athlete for next year at 96kg which was all good, wrestled Ewan a couple of times at the club and its usually a good scrap. Ewan has been wrestling for about 3 1/2 years and has some good skills.

First of all... The venue was Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility in Motherwell, the fella's involved at Tryst Lions and North Lanarkshire Council did a superb job of making the place look great. It was really exciting to walk in there and see the place. They did themselves and their club proud and it was a fantastic day out. My problems, however started the night before... I couldn't for love nor money find my red singlet! It was ridiculous, I looked everywhere for it and it was no where to be seen, so I ended up stressing about that and was up late worrying about what the heck I was going to do. I was wondering what the toll on my body was for all this training, i'm pretty tired alot of the time, despite getting a fair bit of sleep, I sometimes feel like I just need to rest.

Tryst Lions Open at Ravenscraig Regional Sports Centre

Not a great start - however I travelled through for the 8:00am weigh in and weighed in at a nice 119.4kg and then decided that because I was so tired, I needed a nap so ventured out for a power nap in the car. I must have been snoozing for about 45 minutes and woke up and went back in to the hall. I still had a reasonable amount of time before my bout but the issue I find with Wrestling competitions is that you never know how long you have. In theory there are 6 minutes per match but pins and technical falls make it impossible to tell. Despite trying to get into the zone, I just couldn't get into it. I wasn't comfortable, I don't know whether its because with this little quest I've put myself under pressure, or whether it was because it was my first match back from injury or simply that I was tired, only had a blue singlet and just wasn't feeling it.

The match came about, I got on the mat with Ewan... Coach Cavanagh was in my corner and we started to wrestle. Ewan kindly loaned me his red singlet that was a size to small, so I looked more like I was rocking a badly fitting women's swim suit, proper budgie smuggling! anyway, I scored first with a leg attack that put Ewan into the blue to take a 1 - 0 lead. Then I don't know why I did it but I went for a double leg attack, got countered and before I could react on the ground ended up in a very easy pin position for Ewan and that was that. Not taking away anything from Ewan, he did well, read the situation -,reacted well and won the match. But... yet again I was my own worst enemy, if I had stuck to the game plan and defended after I had scored that would have been the smart thing to do and the match might have been a bit different. I haven't got the mat awareness that I need yet but that only comes with matches.

The heavyweights from the Tryst Open

The second match, I was nervous about but really looking forward to, it was against a fella called Gregory Martinetti. As it turns out Gregory is a former Olympian who fought for Switzerland in the 2000 games. He fought at 85kg back then and wow, what an experience wrestling him. He was fluid, very very impressive and there wasn't much I could do to stop him scoring, I managed to avoid the head locks which was a result for me and had a reasonable scrap with him but he was far too quick for me, every time he moved there was another point and not surprisingly he beat me convincingly 7 - 0. Again, in Wrestling there are only winners and learners and I took away a lot from that bout and that meant I finished in 3rd of 3. Not great! 

From that you might think a wasted journey, but  you have to look at what I have learnt from it. Positives are sometimes really difficult to find but I have found that you need to look outside the bx a little when your against the wall. Psychology plays a massive part sport in general and especially in wrestling. I need to learn to have a bit more control and train myself to get in the "zone". And what is that "zone"? for me its a place where i'm warmed up, psychologically ready to get on the mat, i have been through my visualisation and am ready to compete. I had it at the British Novices and at Bolton, even at the British Championships when I got injured but didn't have it at Tryst, and what a difference. I have a plan and warm up routine, but I really need to work hard to implement it. I used to do it for rugby but haven't managed to transfer it across to wrestling...yet, possibly because my rugby routine playing for Scotland used to have me taking a couple of minutes somewhere quiet Toilet or more often than not in the shower. It is so important to focus, and i think that at the last competition I really just couldn't so I need to go into the next one ready and will my own routine.

In other Wrestling news, its been pretty exciting, despite a bad day for me at Ravenscraig - we got measured for the kit for next year, if anyone knows me, they will know that I'm a big lover of stash! I roamed in and had to try on the Asics gear which was all pretty smart, a little small on the day and I measured in at a 50 inch chest, which is the biggest I have ever been and was the biggest the guys from Team Scotland had measured at that time... they still had the weightlifters and hammer throwers, some big lads! I've also got access to the Team Scotland on-line management system, which is pretty interesting. They ask loads of questions and take a lot of details, so I guess if I do qualify they will utilise that info. They ask some pretty random stuff - what year in history I would like to have lived through? have a think about that one, its tough! its really exciting to be included in those things and here all the plans for the coming months, just a reminder that things are real and starting to come together.

Back home, on the family front. Emma has got a new job, which is awesome for her. It does mean that my training schedule has had to change a bit. Wednesday at Edinburgh Wrestling Club, Thursday at Emirates with my new training partner Iain Feenan. I really enjoyed having Iain down, he picked it up pretty quickly and we had a good brawl but again I was knackered by the end of it, Vio put us through our paces a little with the warm up but Iain being the machine he is, is still in pretty good nick. Great to have a training partner.

I managed to get along to the club at Tullibody the other week, which was awesome, I really enjoyed the coaching from Alan and Colin, its a great club but a tad far away for me. Training at Edinburgh Wrestling Club has been good, we need more people down to really get things going, its a shame that we haven't got more, so if you haven't got anything to do on a Wednesday and your in Edinburgh, get along, it would help me out! I have managed to get my first win against Coach Cavanagh 8 - 5. It took me over a year to do it
It was the extra minute that let me do that and that meant I had bragging rights for the week, last we had a tough session and there was a rematch which saw Michael throw me with about 3 seconds to go to win the match 3-1 so my gloating was very short lived. Frustrating as he has the bragging rights back but good to know that your coach can boss you.

I even had Dave Simm back at the club this week, he has forgotten a few things, but is still a brute to wrestle against, he did really well, I was burst after the session but managed to get a suicide throw and a pin which was good for me but lucky! That session we had Chris Sellar from the Sportscotland Young Persons Sports Panel in doing a video. The guys and girls from the panel are making a video showcasing all the commonwealth sports and I think Chris found it pretty tough and got some decent footage. He did an interview with Michael and myself so hopefully they can use that. Will be nice for Wrestling to get a little promo.

Cup cake fest!

I've been trying to watch what I eat this month - however, Emma has been baking like a daemon over the last couple of weeks practising for a family friends 21st birthday, Halloween themed cupcakes and I have been the tasting board. The cakes have been pretty awesome, very tasty and Emma should be pretty proud, not a trained baker or decorator but she nailed it with the Chocolate Orange, Vanilla, Sticky Toffee Apple, Pumpkin and caramel cupcakes. Yum!

I suppose the final thing for me has been a couple of days of worrying about my old man. I drove through to Pittenweem after a really nice weekend with Emma, I took her out for a meal and to see the Lion King at the Edinburgh Playhouse for her Birthday - seats were great but wow the playhouse is not designed for any man over 6 foot tall, so cramped. I spent the last 20 minutes trying to shift the pain from my knees to my hips to avoid having to get up. Almost gave a standing ovation, just to be able to stretch. When I got to Pittenweem, there was an added bonus I was told there were clothes hanging up - and RESULT - the red singlet was there!

 My mission was to pick up my dad and take him through to hospital. Despite it being pretty brief and miserable weather, I do really enjoy being back in Pittenweem, its a nice part of the world. The old man was in for his spinal operation to fix the Stenosis in his neck, there was a 1% chance of paralysis and believe me - that plays on your mind, the what ifs weren't good to think about. He came out of it well, I popped into see him and he was cracking jokes and showing off, touching his toes. He was discharged a day early, so am very thankful to the surgeons and nurses at the Western General for their work. He is still recovering but its great that he is okay.

That pretty much wraps up the last 6 weeks in my life. Sorry if it was a little long, fair bit to catch up on!

As ever, thanks for taking a bit of time out to read. Really appreciate the support! still a long way to go but the focus for the next 6 months is really to get myself fitter, faster, stronger and hone down those techniques! 

@shocksjr

Wrestling 2020 and beyond

It’s been a good while since my last blog update, I can hear the thoughts of “not long enough” going through some people’s heads. Truth be told I've been trying to get this update done for over a week now and yet again in this little quest to become a Commonwealth Athlete. I've found it a bit of a struggle to balance all the facets of life. 

Actually training has been great fun the last few weeks, I've properly got back into my weights programme that Alex has done for me, I've been looking a reasonable size (muscle wise) and have been enjoying a bit of bulking in the gym currently at 119.1kg. Even better than that though I've been loving Wrestling. There was a stage admittedly that I was just so tired and run down that I really couldn't be bothered but I still did it and got through it. Even better though I've fully recovered from injury

I think every sports person who has had an injury will know what I'm talking about when I say that you get the “FEAR” when you get into the same position as when you received the injury the first time round. It happened to me in rugby – when I blew my knee out it was always in the back of my mind that I might do it again and that is a dangerous thing, you adjust your body position or don't pull all effort in and you are more likely to get injured. I'm past that bit with this injury. I probably got back on the mat 3-4 weeks too soon, but I needed to because my knowledge had slipped badly but after last night’s session, I'm pretty confident I'm back on track. It's nice to have that fluidity in your wrestling.

So…onto the International Olympic Committee recommendation. As you will be aware if you have any interest in the sport that this weekend is the announcement whether wrestling shall regain its place in the Olympic Programme after 2020. There have been some significant changes to the sport, and for those of you comedians out there, that doesn't mean fireworks, entrance music or a finishing move. They have changed the scoring system that is designed to make the sport more exciting and encourage more spectacular bouts. Don’t be fooled though, watching a couple of heavyweights compete isn’t going to be too much more exciting but you never know. If this whole saga with the IOC has done nothing more that give FILA a bit of a boot in the arse and raised the profile of the sport then that’s a good thing. It’s brought a lot of people from all over the world closer together and that can only be a good thing for the sport. Wrestling in Edinburgh has certainly benefited from the news that the IOC was going to turf it from the Olympics. I still struggle to get my head round that in the first place... a sport that was in the ancient Olympics from 776 B.C and has 300 million participants world wide its an outrageous idea to consider in the first place.

The IOC will announce this weekend their verdict based upon the presentations of the World Governing Bodies of the sports that were on the short list. Who is going to get in? Well, personally from chatting to a few people I think that Wrestling will rightly be restored to its place on the Olympic programme but I also think that to save face the IOC will need to put something else in as well. To my mind that has to be squash. Squash have been on the shortlist for the Olympics 3 times, they have made some incredible changes to the way their sport is perceived and viewed across the globe and let’s be honest if you look at squash, they deserve it. Whilst I think Karate would be a good addition to the programme I just don’t think the governing body is in a fit enough state to progress to that level of competition, that said there is of course argument to say that if it was granted access to the Olympics it would give the sport a boot in the right direction. There you have it … if I was a betting man Wrestling and Squash into the programme.

I’ve had a bit of a humbling experience over the last couple of weeks which has been pretty interesting. The first was heading home to see my parents for a couple of days. My old man is getting progressively worse with a stenosis in his neck which is affecting his walking. Although he is still doing too much and he knows it! 

My old man has been working tirelessly for the last 11 years on building a new church for the East Neuk Baptist Fellowship (Now Coast Line Community Church). Through the battles with planning and the community council who were opposed to it being built. Yep can you believe that a community council in a small fishing town were opposed to a new church facility that is open to the public, for conference, cafe, book store as well as a church. It's shocking that they didn't support the project and are still causing issues. Some people need a reality check.

Anyway I walked into the church building and the only thoughts going through my head were that dad had put in some much time, effort and thought into the building and I was incredibly proud of him. It was an amazing feeling knowing that your dad has had such a positive influence on somewhere that is going to benefit so many. What was even nicer was at the opening ceremony Mum and Dad were asked to cut the ribbon, testament to all the work that they had put into that.

David Smith - Changing Paths

I was pretty gutted I couldn’t be there, but more pressing matters needed tending to. Simmo (weeble’s) 30th birthday bash in Bristol. A competition of Mini Golf, Bowling and Laser Quest had me fighting off some old friends to try to win coupled with the first "Sharknado" drinkathon. I took a 2^nd place overall which I wasn’t going to complain about despite getting a gutter ball at bowling and completely sucking at golf.  

Then there was the the Edinburgh Sports Conference, we had David Smith MBE as a speaker, I've spoke about David before and about his story and I will say it again. The man is a complete inspiration. An incredible story that is really just opening another chapter as he hangs up his oars and jumps onto a bike in hope of Rio 2016. I was lucky enough to be able to speak to David for a bit before and after his speech at the conference. It’s not often you meet someone who has a Paralympic Gold Medal but even more impressive than that was how genuine a bloke he is, happy to chat to anyone and hear what their stories are. By the way, those medals are pretty damn heavy! He mentioned about planet X bikes. I am in the market for a road bike, I’ve never been a big rider but something I’m getting pretty keen to get into, so will do some exploring! If anyone can recommend some good bikes, I'm all ears!

Mexican Drug Lord Fool

My final humbling experience was having my good friend Ben over from Australia. You realise when you haven’t seen someone for 5 years and you can slip back into a good friendship like they have never been away you realise that people are good friends. We hit Edinburgh pretty hard, Castle, Whisky, Wrestling (he almost spewed) and even came up with a new business venture that i'm not going to mention - its too premature. It was great to see him and even better was the banter on Friday night at Emma’s birthday Mexican themed night. Ben pulled out the artistic side and made me a wrestling mask for the evening. See picture. What a hero and I drew some tattoos for him as a Mexican Drug Lord. Something that Cameron was pretty keen to emulate this week. He took a shine to Ben! He has been trying to find him for the last couple of days. Looking for his friend "Big Ben" as opposed to his cousin "Little Ben"

Nacho Libre

My final thing to report on is the Scottish Institute of Sport. I was asked to submit an application to the Wrestling High Performance Programme to get institute support. That application unsurprisingly came back negative. I dwelled on it for a minute or two but to be perfectly honest, why should the institute take me on? I’ve not got any qualification results.I haven’t shown that I’m good enough to compete in Glasgow 2014, I've only wrestled in 4 competitions - had I not been injured in the British it might have been a different story but the main thing is that if I qualify in March at the British closed, then its Team Scotland who have the final say and that is still my target and achievable So on that note – I have a lot of work to do, i'm going to work my arse off to make sure I compete at the Commonwealth Games on 29 July 2014. Ticket plug there! head to http://www.glasgow2014.com/tickets

Thanks for taking time out to have a read. Hope you enjoyed it.

@shocksjr

P.S = really good video from US Wrestling about keeping Wrestling in the Olympics

Note to Self - gut wrenches are not good for the ribs!

After the IOC rocked the wrestling world there have been some pretty big movements on a political stage. Vladimir Putin is supporting a committee that has representation from Russia, the United States, Cuba, Iran and Japan. That's a lot of big hitters in the global community and as Michael Cavanagh pointed out "there aren't many things in the world that would get those countries on the same page" and he's right. Let's just hope the IOC take note and give Wrestling a reprieve in September. You've even had 2 Gold medallists from 1996 and 2000 send their medals back to the IOC in protest and I don't know what I think about that. Pretty extreme but they must feel strongly enough about it to do it.

Bulgarian Valentin Yordanov sends back his medal

Personally, I think the IOC would be pretty stupid not to give Wrestling its spot back, I was reading a blog by a guy called Willie Saylor and the stats he was quoting showed wrestling in a really good light and made you question what the real motives were to recommend Wrestling's removal. He actually highlights some of the things I was rabbiting on about but its worth a read. you can get the link here. One thing the decision has done is increase the profile of the sport.

My training has taken a little bit of a back seat of late. I was having problems with my side for a few days after the English Championships so ended up getting it checked out at the hospital. They reckon there is a cracked rib in there which Ross, my physio/masseuse agreed with. The medical stand point was "Nothing we can do, pain killers and keep mobile"so I continued to train. Problem was that I was getting gut wrenched and that hurt like hell. It must have been the Grecco Champion at the English Championships, he got a beautiful Gut Wrench on me.

On the home front, the family has been in the wars this week as well, Cameron has developed what looks a lot like Chicken Pox and Emma has a pretty bad chest infection, so its fun again this week in my household but on the plus side we are the happy owners of a new car! 

The Emirates Arena in Glasgow

I have had mixed fortunes in my training matches of late which has been annoying. I managed to get to the Emirates arena with Martin just after my last blog update. What a venue! it's an impressive facility and I haven't even sneaked a peak at the Chris Hoy Velodrome yet. The athletics arena is awesome and Wrestling is housed at the back on the balcony, you even get to watch the Glasgow Rocks pro basketball team in the morning sessions. It's pretty cool. I got some good one on one coaching with Vio and Vlad and I got some really good feedback about my speed in attack. That session I would say was the most useful I've had to date. They let me find what I was comfortable with and get my stance sorted before showing me the grips. That's what i've been missing. It's helped me massively, so much so that I finally managed to get a win on the mat against Steven Cote. It's been along time coming! not that I'm going to brag about it too much, that wouldn't be cool but suffice to say I was down by 3 and managed to get a double leg take down and then 2 rolls to win the bout 5 - 3. It was good fun. I could go on but if I was to do that i'd have to admit that Coach Cavanagh beat me the same day 5 - 2 or 5 -3 I can't remember, he is like a raging bull when he is losing!

My success on the mat didn't last long, back in Glasgow two days later I got my ass kicked by Zane and Pedram in a round robin one minute on and one minute off. That was hard going. I just couldn't find my groove and ended up head snapping Zane into my nose which didn't help matters. Still life goes on and I had a special visitor to Friday nights session, my good friend Callum Anderson rocked up for a bit of training and we worked on a move called the suicide throw. Sounds cool but its really just to use when your in trouble. The sneaky git, used it and scored three points to win the first round. Fair play to Callum, he got stuck in, learnt the move and used it well. Luckily for me, I managed to bring him down a peg or two in the next round with a  gator roll from standing. I think he enjoyed himself, might even see him again. 

Volunteer 2014

I've found the last week really infuriating, because my rib is sore I've been over compensating on my left side which has destroyed my back, i've been having massive problems with movement so haven't been training which i've not been enjoying but managed to get on the mat earlier to be in the background for an interview with the BBC. Michael Cavanagh was getting interviewed about the closing of the Glasgow 2014 volunteers which is tomorrow (28th February) If you haven't filled in an application and you are in Scotland - you should get it handed in - there is still time http://www.glasgow2014.com/join/volunteering 

Anyway, Joanne Macaulay from the BBC interviewed me about Volunteering and my exploits on the mat so for all you early birds it should be on Reporting Scotland tomorrow morning. I'm well aware I should have had a haircut! I should say thanks to Alex at this point for letting me throw him around a bit. I got my volunteer application in this evening, I was a little late to the party, but better late than never. Hopefully I'll be competing in 2014 but if not I would love to be there as a volunteer. I can't see there being another Commy Games in Scotland in my lifetime but you never know.

This week, its back to training, I want to hit it hard and get to where I need to be for the British novices in April. I'm looking forward to that one and feeling a lot more confident on the mat!

Thanks for taking time out to read and if you are a heavier lad  at a loose end on Monday lunchtimes or Friday evenings, get yourself down to [EN]GAGE and get on the mat!

Cheers

@shocksjr

Thoughts on the IOC recommendation

I'm taking a break from my normal blog style of telling everyone else what I've been up to in my quest to get to the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Rest assured, it’s all good this week but there are more important things to discuss. I promise my break in normal themes hasn’t got anything to do with losing a match 5 – 2 to Michael Cavanagh on Monday. It was a sad day but great fun and absolutely nothing to do with a cracked rib!

International Olympic Committee

Of course the more important thing this week that I’m blogging about is the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) recommendation to remove Wrestling from the Olympic Games after 2020.That recommendation from the IOC has the potential to put Wrestling on the sporting equivalent of the endangered species list. You may think that's a tad dramatic but indulge me for a minute and I'll qualify that statement. 

First of all let’s take a quick look at Wrestling – Wrestling is one of the oldest combat sports in the world. Historians can track wrestling back 15,000 years but most noticeably and most relevant to this news is that Wrestling was the number one sport in the ancient Olympiad and has featured in every modern Olympic Games bar Paris 1900, that’s a pretty impressive track record. In one sense Wrestling has until now withstood the test of time, holds the traditional values and provides a link back to the ancient history of the games themselves.

Egyptian Burial Chamber drawing depicting wrestling from 2400 BC

The Olympics is steeped in tradition, I for one don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on the traditional values and the merits that the individual sports bring to the modern games. Not only that; but let’s look at the popularity of the sport. Those in the UK will say “What? popularity of Wrestling?” well you’d be surprised, there are over 200 countries across the globe where Wrestling is recognised, in the College set up in the US it is the 6^th most popular sport and their High School programmes last year alone had 280,384 participants pushing Wrestling into the top 10 sports. That’s just the US, look at Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Canada and Iran to name but a few and I’ll bet you have a hell of a lot of world wide participants. Granted the UK only had 701 registered Wrestlers last year but there were more who aren’t affiliated to the National Governing Body.

Here are my thoughts - In my view what makes the Olympic Games the greatest sporting competition in the world are the principles that they were founded upon. The Olympic Charter speaks of Olympism. They describe Olympism as a philosophy of life that combine the qualities of mind, body and will, blending sport with culture and education. The Olympic Charter goes on to state that the goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind and that the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic Spirit. 

Unfortunately, In my view I don’t feel the vision and values that the Olympics and the IOC should hold to its core match the current situation that we find ourselves in today. Once upon a time the Olympic Games were about Amateur athletes coming together to compete for their nations but nowadays that’s been lost in the commercialisation of sport. Wrestling lost its place because the IOC deemed there to not be enough global popularity, the volume of ticket sales and its sexiness for a television audience. I’m paraphrasing of course but they could have just said... Money!

I would like to think that because I’ve not been involved in Wrestling for that long, I can take a slightly objective view of their decision but to be frank I think they have made the wrong choice. The IOC are trying to modernise, I get that. It’s essential for every organisation to move with the times, the Olympics is now big business with big sponsors and they can and need to continue to attract big television audiences and ticket sales, how do you maximise TV audiences and Sponsorship? you get the big names from the big team sports but I would argue that its taking away from the whole ethos of the Olympics?

GB had Andy Murray playing tennis, whilst it was great for GB to medal. I watched (on TV) Andy Murray play in the Wimbledon final three weeks prior to the Olympics starting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s done wonders for Tennis, but the question is, did Tennis really need the extra exposure of being an Olympic sport?

The question I would ask to the IOC is why do we need to lose any of the smaller sports, the IOC claim that the cap on sports is to allow for manageable organisation but surely Tennis, Rugby, Football and Golf all have their rightful places away from the Olympics. If I wanted to watch a contest of any of the above sports I could do so easily throughout the year, every year because they all have majors, grand slams, world cups and International Competitions. What’s next Olympic F1?

Save Olympic Wrestling

Back to one of my opening comments, the endangered species. Wrestling has the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, yes it’s got Regional and World Championships in Europe, Asia and the Americas but taking the carrot of the Olympics away from Wrestling would be like taking away the Football World Cup. Wrestling is very much a development / grass roots sport and if you take away something as large as the Olympics, then what do the young one’s have to aspire to. You are almost guaranteed to see the world wide participation rates decline. For those nations not in the Commonwealth, what do they have left on an international profile raising stage?

You have to hope that the people at the IOC have thought about it and aren't just bowing down to the political, corporate and commercial pressures that have been festering within sport over the last few years. The IOC has an obligation to protect the autonomy of sport; that means to keep it independent, to me that means forget the politics and forget the commercialisation and let sport be sport. Let’s hope they see sense and keep Wrestling where it is...where it deserves to be. 


Thanks for taking time out to read

@shocksjr