WRESTLING QUOTA

Is the Wrestling Quota too Small and How to Fix It

May 10, 2024

At the Final Chance Wrestling Qualification happened in Istanbul - Team USA lost out on chances to qualify in Men’s Greco Roman 60KG, 67KG, 77KG and despite a great effort today by Kamal Bey… 16 athletes just doesn’t seem enough for Olympics.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: WHY ARE OLYMPIC WRESTLING SO SMALL?

“16 is too small for any Olympic knockout tournament” @johnscholle

“Wrestling gets the short stick because the IOC hates them. Should be 10 weight classes per event and bigger brackets”@NE_Adrifty

THE ANSWER: YES

WRESTLING has few things that hampers their quota in each event.

18 events (more than any other combat sports in the Olympics)
Lack of Gender Parity (6 more male events than female events). The only sport with this imbalance on the male side currently in the Olympic program. They can only get away with it due to the two female sport disciplines: artistic swimming and rhythmic gymnastics but it doesn’t make sense long term
Breakup of the USSR has lead to 6 nations qualify a spot that only used to go to 1 nation. Instead of embracing more team events with these emerging wrestling powerhouses - everything is done individually and qualifying for the Olympics is very tough.

WHAT THE NUMBERS TELL US

FIX WRESTLING QUOTA #1: LESS WEIGHT CLASSES

I know ten weight classes were in the Olympics until 1996 and the NCAA Championships uses ten weight classes but FORGET IT.

Change the World Championships to only six or seven (will explain my thoughts on seven below) weight classes. Allow two competitors from NOCs as long as they don’t enter over 10 competitors per gender. With this format the Wrestling World Championships would likely head into a 64 person bracket that in some brackets would include top two wrestlers from powerhouse like US, Russia, Iran and Japan (only one could qualify for the Olympics). It would give World Championships some added intrigue as Team USA fans maybe seeing David Taylor and Aaron Brooks in a gold medal match last year at World Championships.

The Wrestling World Championships includes 12 non-Olympics weight classes (4 in each discipline- men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle, men’s greco-roman). Wrestling should look at judo or taekwondo for some guidance. Judo only has their Olympic weight classes at the World Championships but allows nations to submit 2 athletes in some weight classes. The other option would be to follow Taekwondo that has 4 non olympic weight classes at their World Championships but points in the non-olympic weight classes at the World Championships can count towards Olympic qualification. That would have allowed Team USA to benefit from Vito Arujau and Zain Retherford gold medals at the 2023 World Championships and help qualifying Team USA in the 57KG and 65KG rather than leave it to a continental or last chance Olympic qualification where their performance at Worlds are not enhanced by their international ranking (Retherford will need to fight an extra match at the OQT even though he won back to back medals at 70KG the last two World Championships).

Fix 1: Go with 7 weight classes - the 6 current Olympic weight classes and likely keep Men’s 61KG and Women’s 72KG as the non Olympic weight classes for now

FIX WRESTLING QUOTA #2: ADD BEACH WRESTLING

When it comes to Olympic combat sports- Wrestling and Boxing have the longest history with the Olympics dating back 2,700 years ago to the Ancient Olympic Games. The only thing that really changed in the case of Greco-Roman wrestling is that the male competitor have changed their uniform from their birthday suit to a singlet.

In the last 35 years - The Olympics have made great strides towards gender parity in terms of the athletes and events. Using the numbers of OlyMADmen - the 1988 Seoul Olympics saw nearly 3 out of every 4 athletes being male while the 2024 Paris Olympics when the IOC distributed athlete quotas it was the goal of full gender parity (50% men, 50% women).

As this movement towards gender parity has gone on- wrestling and boxing have been late to the program. Women’s wrestling was not added to the Olympic program until 2004 and Women’s boxing until 2012. Even after women’s freestyle wrestling was added - it was not until three Olympics later (Rio 2016) that there was an equal amount of men and women’s freestyle events in the Olympics and still 75% of the athletes in wrestling are male.

Being ahead of the curve on gender parity has worked in Judo’s favor. They added a mixed gender event at the Tokyo Olympics and for Paris - judo had the biggest athlete quota (372) out of any of the four combat sports.

Since the 2004 Olympics; all male events added to the Olympics have been added with a women’s event in that Olympic sport as well. Most events added to the Olympics have come in new sports help gender parity and this has included a boom in mixed-gender events (Paris will have 20 Olympic events that are mixed gender). Most of the events eliminated from Tokyo and Rio program were male events without a female counterpart (athletics: men’s 50km race walk, sailing: men’s heavyweight dinghy; rowing: men’s lightweight fours) not to mention in the last four Olympics fellow combat sport boxing has eliminated four male boxing divisions to achieve gender parity by athlete.

It has been floated and rumored for a while around LA28 but to keep some of the ancient Olympics roots go which Beach Wrestling over Greco-Roman. Bottom line in a 100% gender equal Olympics- Greco-Roman wrestling does not work as a male only sport. Even though it has been the Olympics since 1896 there is no other Olympic sport in 2024 that has 100 more men compete than women. There is some historical evidence the ancient Greece likely wrestled on the sand/mud outside (advantage Beach Wrestling) and Beach Wrestling has more women participation. Due to certain rules in beach wrestling about knee touching etc it does offer a different sport from freestyle wrestling that might resemble greco-roman wrestling.

Fix 2: Drop the 6 Greco-Roman male only weight classes and add 4 Beach Wrestling weight classes (2 in each gender). There are currently 4 Beach Wrestling weight classes on the Beach Wrestling Series tour so this would be just combining the two for the Olympics and likely keeping the results from both weight classes for Olympic qualification (see Taekwondo example above)

FIX WRESTLING QUOTA #3: ADD TEAM EVENT

Why has it got a lot of harder for the US to qualify for the Olympics in wrestling in 2000? The answer has to do deal with the USSR

Who has won the most wrestling gold medals at the Olympics? USSR. USSR last competed at the Olympics in 1988 and still have the most World Championships Gold Medals. Since 1996 -15 nations that made up the USSR1 are still currently competing at the Olympics and guess what- the majority of these nations are really good at wrestling.

So when wrestling decides to cap every bracket at 16 nations because of the strict 10,500 athlete quota- the former nations that make up the USSR is taking up around 6 athlete quotas in every male event (it is about 4 in every female event). It doesn’t seem odd to see a men’s Greco Roman weight class go from 21 competitors in 1988 to 16 competitors in 2024 but if you look at the 77KG weight class where Kamal Bey missed the Olympics by one spot - the bigger point is the old USSR nations which was taking up one spot in 1988 is now taking up 6 spots with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (AIN), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia (AIN) and Uzbekistan.

So how do you fix this problem? ADD A TEAM EVENT -Wrestling does have a World Cup Event where they six to eight nations compete in all ten weight classes. But looking at the numbers - only FOUR nations sent 30 wrestlers (a wrestler in every weight class) to the 2023 World Championships while FORTY nations sent 8 or more wrestlers to the 2023 World Championships.

Start a Team Event. Scoring could be simple - Best of 3 or Best of 5.
Revamp the Wrestling World Cup into a 32 or more nation tournament two years before the Olympics where nations qualify for the Olympics and therefore qualify spots not based on an individual performance at the World Championships. You would build up the rivalries between USA, Iran, Russia, Japan, and but also some strong wrestling nations like Azerbaijan, Georgia, Egypt, Turkiye, China, India, and Kyrgyzstan.

At the Olympics you could have a scaled down team event of the World Cup where any nation with 3 wrestlers in each gender could compete on the last couple days of competition and you would allow for wrestlers to have a chance at 2 medals and more recognition at the Olympics.

Fix 3: Add a Men’s and Women’s Team Event in place of 2 Greco-Roman weight classes.

Any thoughts feel free to leave a comment?

TEAM USA TRACKER

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