Wrestling likely to survive – IOC official

Leading Olympic official John Coates was “amazed” that wrestling was recommended for the axe from the Summer Games last month and thinks the sport still has a very good chance of retaining its place in the programme.

The Australian is one of 14 members of the IOC Executive Board who voted in Lausanne to recommend wrestling be dropped from the Games after 2016. The board’s 15th member, IOC president Jacques Rogge, did not vote.

Wrestling featured in the first modern Games in 1896, and in all but one of the subsequent editions, and the decision prompted uproar around the sporting world.

Coates, however, thinks wrestling will be on the shortlist after the board meets in St Petersburg in May to decide which of eight candidate sports will proceed to the next stage.

The shortlisted sports will face a vote of the full IOC for one place in the 2020 Games in September in Buenos Aires, where Coates believes the wider electorate will favour wrestling.

“I would be very surprised if wrestling isn’t one of those (on the shortlist) and you could well get a very different result when there’s 115 people voting as opposed to 14,” he said.

“So, all we’ve done is a recommendation. My guess is, the one that will find it most difficult because of the groundswell of support for wrestling is going to be the baseball-softball combination, because both those sports and wrestling very much depend on the Americas.”

Baseball and softball have joined together in a bid to return to the Games, while squash, karate, wakeboarding, roller sports, sports climbing and wushu are the six other candidates for inclusion.