By Jabbar Fazeli
The IOC announced today that they are dropping wrestling from the 2020 Olympics to make way for a new discipline to be added later this year. (1)
"Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896."
The US and Iran are among the countries with competitive wrestling teams in past Olympics and many of the Iranian Olympic medals come from this discipline in sport. Iran's first silver medal in the Olympics was by Gholamreza Takhti in 1952 (2,3), and first Iranian gold medal was won by Emam-Ali Habibi in 1956 and was also in wrestling (3).
With Iran becoming a "light weight" in world politics and sports governing bodies it is unclear if the IR did anything to try to influence this decision by the IOC.
(1) http://espn.go.com/olympics/wrestling/story/_/id/8939185/ioc-drops-wrestling-2020-olympics
(2) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/01/profile-gholamreza-takhti-world-champion-wrestler-iranian-patriot.html
(3) http://www.iranchamber.com/sport/takhti/gholamreza_takhti.php
Photo source: PBS
