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Wrestling, like so many of those who have competed in the sport that dates to the Ancient Olympics in 776 B.C., relied on a potent combination of strength, sweat and competitive savvy to secure a spot in the 2020 and 2024 Games.
An International Olympic Committee vote Sunday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, convincingly selected wrestling over baseball-softball and squash.
“We are back!!!” tweeted Cornell’s Kyle Dake, who is in Budapest, Hungary with the U.S. team training for the world championships.
Many of the biggest American names in wrestling exhaled as the threat to the sport dissolved, but cautioned the sport’s work had only started.
“I hope we don’t say, ‘Whew,’ but keep moving forward,” said Kevin Jackson, Iowa State’s coach who won a gold medal in 1992 and coached the U.S. freestyle teams at the 2004 and 2008 Games. “This created a platform. We got more media attention from being dropped from the program, than any time in history. What do we do with that?”
Wrestling’s Olympic status had been threatened when the IOC’s executive committee voted in February to remove the sport’s status as one of 25 core sports after the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
For softball, it was a particularly crushing blow. Baseball has top pro leagues around the world, the World Series and the World Baseball Classic. Softball had the Olympics.
Don Porter, the American co-president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, choked up and had tears in his eyes as he talked about receiving letters from young girls who were distraught when softball was dropped.
“We want to give every little girl and boy in the world a chance to play our game,” Porter said.
Dan Gable, the legendary Iowa coach who won a freestyle wrestling gold medal in 1972, said confidence about the outcome in wrestling’s favor gave way to relief.
“It was almost like I started to have this feeling of anxiety, I started to have this feeling where I could break down a little bit like eternal joy,” said Gable, “(But) it was almost like our people did such a good job, I expected to hear, ‘Wrestling.’ ”