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NUNAVUT
Wrestling is a sport which has been around for more than 2,000 years. It can trace its lineage back to the ancient Olympic Games in Greece all those years ago.

Iglulik's Uliipika Irngaut, right, gets set to battle her opponent at the 2012 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse. Wrestling was dropped from the Olympic program but was re-instated earlier this month by the International Olympic Committee. - NNSL file photo

But when it was removed from the Olympic program last year, it certainly didn't come without plenty of questions and millions of angry people demanding to know why.

But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to give the sport another go and on Sept. 9 voted it back into the 25-sport program, beginning with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The sport received a majority of 49 votes out of a possible 97 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, beating out the combined bid of baseball/softball and squash.

Cape Dorset's Mike Soares, coach for Nunavut's wrestling team at the 2013 Canada Summer Games last month in Sherbrooke, Que., said taking the sport out of the Olympic program was a mistake to begin with and it may have been a bit of gamesmanship on the part of the IOC.

"In an effort to not admit any new sports, they bumped wrestling, (then) had it competing with other sports (to get back in). It was basically a slam dunk to get wrestling back in," the coach said.

Soares said another theory may be that the IOC pitted one sport against another and that's not the way it should go when you consider other sports such as modern pentathlon don't have the same appeal as wrestling.

"You have people riding a horse and shooting, and where is that a popular sport anywhere in the world?," he asked.

"What country has thousands and thousands of people doing that sport anywhere in the world? And how come something like that is left in? I think it's all about this elitist money machine that the Olympic movement has been hijacked by and it's quite disturbing."

The original decision saw the IOC remove wrestling from the Summer Olympic program this past February after deciding to go from 26 core sports to 25 based upon a recommendation from a study done by the IOC's executive committee.

Wrestling was the odd sport out and the war began.

One of the big things the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA), the sport's governing body, did was revert back to rules which once existed. For example, when wrestling was still on the Olympic program in 2012, matches were contested under three two-minute rounds. Points were still counted, but now rounds counted for more as a wrestler could win one round, 4-0, then lose the next two rounds, 1-0, and lose the match. The decision was made by FILA to go back to the old system of two three-minute rounds and have cumulative points rather than counting the number of winning rounds. FILA also brought in a position for a permanent female vice-president role on its board, something which has never happened until recently.

Soares said wrestling, just like other sports, has to have an appeal for those with a remote control, and capture their attention before they change the channel.

"It has to reflect that it has an uneducated viewership that has a very simplistic view of the sport," he said.

"Wrestling has had to adapt as far as that goes."

If wrestling didn't get back on the Olympic program, there would be the threat of huge funding losses and interest at various levels, but Soares said it wouldn't have been too much of a hit at the high school level in Nunavut.

"The sport at the high school level in Canada and here is pretty strong," he said.

"In most places, the high school championships for wrestling is one of the largest participation events in the calendar year."

In any event, Soares said the IOC erred in their judgment to get rid of the sport, but you'll never get them to admit that.

He said members of the IOC seemingly have their noses buried in a certain place and don't know where they are half the time.

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