Painful blow: Greco-Roman wrestling voted off Olympics

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Photo: Liis Treimann

While this morning’s Daily Telegraph reporter the talk of taking wrestling off the 2020 Olympics programme, by now BBC Sport and all major international news outlets declare that it’s a done deal. Wrestling is no longer an Olympic event.

At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games, wrestling still happens. Arguably, the sport has a chance to make it back into the Olympic family. For that, it has to «wrestle» down baseball, softball, mountaineering, surfboarding, wushu and roller skating.

As we well remember, Greco-Roman wrestling has, through the ages, been among the top sports for Estonians. Even in London 2012, it gave us loads of joy as Heiki Nabi took a heavyweight silver. Also, Ardo Arusaar came 8th in his weight category at the same games. In addition to the Greco-Roman version, Olympics do also include freestyle wrestling. However, Estonia has had no big names in that, lately.

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