Wrestling Stays Alive for 2020 Olympic Games, for Now
In February of this year, the International Olympic Committee made the decision to drop wrestling from the Olympics starting in 2020. Now, just three short months later, wrestling took the first big step in essentially reversing that decision.
Today the IOC’s Executive Board meet in St. Petersburg, Russia and listened to presentations from eight different sports, all vying for a spot in the 2020 games. They ended up voting three sports into the final stage: Squash, Baseball/Softball (joint bid) and Wrestling.
What’s the next step?
The IOC membership committee will meet in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At that time they will vote one of the three finalists into the Olympic program.
Wrestling still has a lot of work to do before the final decision comes in September, but today was a huge step forward.
Wrestling won the first period, but the match isn’t over yet.