IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program, a surprise
decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020
Games. The Washington Post published an article on the reaction of the
Russian wrestlers to it.
"For young Russians, wrestling is a way out: The decision to cut the sport
from the Olympics threatens a culture rooted in the Caucasus,"
the newspaper writes. "Wrestling, for thousands of boys throughout the
Caucasus, represents a way out. The Palace hostel, filled with
ambitious boys from the Caucasus, is their refuge — from hard lives
they left behind, and from the sharp prejudice of Muscovites against
the region and its inhabitants."
“So all these kids will be in the streets,” the newspaper quotes the
1996 Olympics winner Khadzhimurat Magomedov. “Crime, drugs — I don’t
want to go into it.” Yet, the conclusive warning of the article sounds
even more threatening: "In Dagestan, there is also the lure of the
“forest” — the encampments, in other words, of rebel bands fighting to
establish an extremist Islamist state."
Wrestling officials from the great powers of the sport — Russia, Iran,
the United States, Korea, Turkey and Azerbaijan — are joining together
to try to get the ban overturned and are optimistic. They have already
forced out Raphael Martinetti, president of wrestling’s world
governing body, FILA, who resigned on February 16. Sagid Murtazaliev, a
wrestler from Russia’s Dagestan region who won the heavyweight
freestyle gold medal at Sydney in 2000, then upped the pressure by
returning his medal to the International Olympic Committee in protest.
