Sometimes I curse the fact that I love wrestling so much. The sport treats its fans almost as callously as it treats its athletes. Sometimes I wonder if I write about a sport caught in the pull of some tragic Sophoclean destiny, unable to turn from the path of its own inevitable demise at, essentially, its own hand.
Breaking the hearts of boys and girls
To briefly explain the 6-6-6 plan, prior to the IOC decision, Olympic wrestling featured seven weight classes in men's freestlye, seven in Greco-Roman, and four in women's freestyle. The IOC has taken a weight class from each of the two men's styles and added them to women's freestyle.
International Olympic Committee headquartersThis decision dealt a blow to women's wrestling as well. While in the short term, obviously the decision increased the number of women's weight classes. In the long term, however, it limits the number of weight classes. This decision tethers the number of women's freestyle wrestling weight classes to the dwindling number of men's weight classes. Beware of the IOC bearing gifts.
Watching women's wrestling grow every year both in the number of participants and the sophistication of technique, I had high hopes for its growth as an Olympic sport. I looked forward to the day when women's freestyle would continue to obtain more weight classes on the Olympic level to the point where it would have added as to be equal with men's freestyle.
This will never be the case. With the 6-6-6 plan, the IOC has clearly stated that it will not add weight classes to Olympic wrestling; instead they will only redistribute them. The IOC decision has reduced wrestling weight classes to a zero-sum game, and when you play this kind of game, nobody can win without someone else losing, and even worse, the overall level of prosperity
The myth of imperative proportionality
I understand that the IOC still thinks the 6-6-6 plan as unequal, after all, twelve men's weight classes remain as opposed to only six for women. This sort of thinking of shows a remarkable lack of consistency on the part of the IOC, which throughout the Olympic program recognizes that sexual proportionality is not, and should not be an imperative.
A quick look at the Olympic program reveals an events list redolent with sexual disproportions in sports which favor both sexes.
Favoring men: The Olympics includes no women's analogue event in all canoe events, three shooting events, one weightlifting weight class, 50-kilometer walk, seven boxing weight classes, one men's gymnastics event, two rowing events, four-man bobsled, all Nordic combined events and, all ski-jumping events.
Favoring women: The Olympics includes no men's analogue event in all rhythmic gymnastics events, all synchronized swimming events, and three swimming events.
These discrepancies should not act as evidence of some sort of inequity. I believe that some women's sports do not demand a men's analogue, and some men's sports do not demand a women's analogue. Based on the structure of the Summer and Winter Olympic programs, the IOC agrees with me, except, perplexingly, when it comes to wrestling.
Solving the number of athletes problem
The press release for the IOC 6-6-6 decision mentioned that weight classes were deducted from men's wrestling while being added to women's as a means of not running afoul of the arbitrarily established maximum number of athletes who may compete in the Olympics. If the IOC really wanted to help wrestling while keeping the number of overall athlete down, it could have done two things.
First, they could have not added a team sport like sevens rugby to the program. The sport of rugby, in all its forms, seems like an odd fit in the Olympics to begin with, but the size of its teams demand the addition of a substantial number of athletes to the games.
Second, they could have redistributed wrestlers to new women's weight classes. Current weight classes contain, on average, nineteen wrestlers. If you just took two wrestlers from each men's weight class, you would have freed up enough room to establish two new women's weight classes without having to eliminate a men's weight class.
That last point I find particularly troubling. That solution seems so obvious. Certainly it occurred to the IOC. I can't imagine why they would not use that option. The fact that the qualifiers could have been easily distributed, and that the rest of the Olympic program sits filled with massive amounts of proportional representation among the sexes makes me suspect that the act of taking two weight classes from men was simply a punitive measure, and part of a pattern of hostile behavior the IOC has manifested against wrestling for a long time.
I love Olympic wrestling, if only the Olympics loved it too.
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