FILA rejigs weight classes; Sushil, Yogeshwar to move higher

Wrestling's international governing body, FILA has announced a rejig in weight classes for its competitions, including those of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, a development which would lead to India's medallists Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt moving up to a higher weight category.
FILA added two classes to women's freestyle and reduced one each from men's freestyle and Greco-Roman competitions, thus setting a 6-6-6 split among the three disciplines in Rio de Janeiro Games. This weight change will also be applicable in the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.
In its Technical Commission meeting, the world body also decided to change weight categories in other FILA events to affect a split of 8-8-8 among the three disciplines.

The move came after FILA worked with the IOC to ensure wrestling remained on the Olympic programme. The sport was dropped from the list of Olympic programme in February, but was reinstated in September after FILA introduced changes to modernise the ancient sport.
FILA said the changes in rule and competition format will come into effect from January 1 next year.
For the Olympics, the men's freestyle and Greco-Roman will each lose a weight class between light and heavyweight. In Rio, male freestyle wrestlers will compete at 57 and 65 kilograms rather than at 55, 60 and 66 kilograms, like they did at the recent London Games.

This would mean that Sushil and Yogeshwar, who were competing in 66kg and 60kg freestyle respectively will have to move to a new category. Yogeshwar will now have to move to 65kg while Sushil will have to compete in the next higher 74kg.
In Greco-Roman, the two lightest classes are now 59 and 66 kilograms. Freestyle middleweight will remain 74 kilograms, followed by 86, 97 and 125 kilograms for heavyweights. Greco-Roman wrestlers will also compete at 75, 85, 98 and 130 kilograms.