Celebrate like an Olympian

This is how I reacted to wrestling making it back into the Olympics.  Photo from alliseeisgold.com



I meant to post this over a month ago, so I really hope you already heard the news that wrestling is back in the Olympic Games for 2020 and 2024.  If you hadn't heard about this yet, we've got some issues here and I'll need you to contact me ASAP...

When I was on vacation out west, my friend and I took a tour of the Olympic Training Center while we were in Colorado Springs.  I was devastated when I found out that we wouldn't be able to see the wrestling room because it was being painted and they were performing maintenance on the facility.  Somehow it didn't even cross my mind that we'd be visiting there while the US contingent was en route to Budapest, Hungary for the World Championships, and while they were gone would be the best time for the US Olympic Committee to upgrade the room.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to go back sometime.  I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the video that they show guests at the start of the tour.  It showed highlights from some of the recent Olympics.  Many of the scenes gave me chills, especially when there was close up audio and video of one of the US Women's skiers after she won her race and roared in victory.  It was awesome to see and hear the emotion being poured out after such a moment.

That was exactly how I acted when I got the news that wrestling was back in the Olympics.  I hope that my neighbors didn't mind the noise...  However, the fight isn't quite over and we as the wrestling community need to continue the momentum built up from this spring and summer.  Wrestling is not part of the official programme of 25 core sports, and is only guaranteed inclusion in the 2020 and 2024 games.  Much of our victory on September 8th can be attributed to increasing the number of women's weight classes to appease the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in their quest for gender equity, but it came at the expense of men's weight classes.  We are now down to 6 weight classes in each style, a far cry from the 10 we used to have a couple decades ago.  And the IOC made it very plain and clear that while this was an improvement it their eyes, the fact that there are still two styles for men and one for women means that we'll need to make further changes if we want to survive past 2024.  This means that we'll either have to add women's greco-roman, or, more likely, eliminate men's greco-roman.

The following link shows the probable new weight classes: new FILA weight classes.  The major flaw that you'll notice is that the weights were hardly rearranged for an even distribution.  Instead, they essentially eliminated one weight classes and barely moved the others.  That one weight class happened to be 60 kg (132.25 lb) - my weight class.  Before they announced the weights, veteran Greco-Roman wrestler from Akron, Harry Lester, said that the new weights would either be a blessing or the end of his career.  Well, it was likely the end of my career as far as major USA Wrestling and FILA events.  The international weights are so ridiculously spread apart to begin with, and this didn't help at all.  The problem with six weights is that many athletes are forced to cut large amounts of weight.  Under the new weight classes, I'd have to either cut over ten pounds or gain over 10 pounds - in the near future I'm going to cover how you can GAIN some lean muscle if you need to move up a weight class!

Roar in victory,
Jeff