Wrestlers vow to fight Olympic removal

Paris, Feb 13 (AFP) Wrestlers around the world today vowed to fight to save the ancient sport's Olympic status, after the International Olympic Committee voted to drop it for the 2020 Games. Japan and Turkey -- whose cities Tokyo and Istanbul are bidding to host the Games in seven years' time -- led the calls for the world body to reconsider, as an online petition was organised urging a rethink and gained thousands of supporters. The president of the Turkish wrestling federation, Hamza Yerlikaya, called the decision, taken at the IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, yesterday, "unfair" and a "mistake" that they would seek to overturn. "To have the 2020 Olympics in Istanbul without wrestling is unthinkable," said Yerlikaya, himself a double Olympic gold medallist, three-time world champion and eight-time European champion in Greco-Roman wrestling. "We won't allow it," he added. In Japan, Yerlikaya's counterpart Tomiaki Fukuda said on his federation's website that he was "dissatisfied and baffled", echoing the views of the sport's world governing body, which called the decision "an aberration". Wrestling will remain on the programme for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion at the Games four years later. A final decision is to be made when all IOC members meet in September. Members are seen as unlikely to vote against the executive board, however, raising the prospect that one of the few sports that survived from the original Olympics in ancient Greece into the modern era will disappear. Wrestling first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever been left out of the Olympic programme once before in 1900. More (AFP) AH PM 02132214 NNNN