Bulgarian wrestling federation president Valentin Yordanov sent back his Olympic gold medal from the 1996 Atlanta Games yesterday, protesting against the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommendation to drop the sport from the Games.
“As a sign of protest I am returning my gold medal, won at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, to the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne,” seven-times world champion Yordanov wrote in a letter to IOC president Jacques Rogge shown at an emotional news conference.
The wrestling world was shocked last week when the IOC made a surprise recommendation to drop the sport from 2020.
“With this act I express my solidarity with the millions of athletes and fans of our sport who are condemning the recommendation of the IOC,” added the 53-year-old, who is also a seven-time European champion.
“Our sport is an integral part of the Olympic movement and one of the foundations of both the ancient and modern Olympics.”
Bulgarian wrestlers have won 16 Olympic titles, making wrestling the most successful sport in the Balkan country.
Yordanov, the only wrestler to win 10 medals at world championships, retired in 1996, soon after winning the gold at the Atlanta Games in the freestyle 52-kg category. Some of Bulgarian wrestling’s biggest names expressed their support for Yordanov, saying they believed that the IOC would scrap the plans to drop the sport. Bulgarian Greco-Roman wrestling national team coach Armen Nazarian, a double Olympic champion, said he was considering going on hunger strike in protest.
Yordanov said that IOC president Rogge had achieved something that many politicians had failed to do.
“He unreservedly united Russia, the United States and Iran for a single cause - saving the sport of wrestling, without which the Olympics will never be the same,” Yordanov said.
Contested in the first modern Olympics in 1896 and part of the ancient Games in Olympia, wrestling joins baseball and softball, making a joint bid, martial arts karate and wushu, rollersports, wakeboarding and squash as candidate sports battling for one vacant spot in a revamped programme.
The IOC executive board will meet in St Petersburg in May to determine which of them will be put to the vote in September at the IOC session in Buenos Aires.
Less than a week after the IOC’s recommendation, wrestling’s world governing body (FILA) president Raphael Martinetti resigned.
Wrestling’s surprise exit has been blamed by some on a lack of political support within the IOC executive board, where other sports at risk - including modern pentathlon and taekwondo - had the upper hand with representatives in the 15-member group.
The Bulgarian sports ministry said it would continue to back and fund the domestic wrestling federation regardless of the final IOC decision in September.
Medallists urged to lobby IOC for wrestling
Tokyo: Japanese wrestling chiefs yesterday urged Olympic medallists the world over to join forces to save their sport from the chop at the 2020 Games.
Tomiaki Fukuda, vice president of the international wrestling federation FILA, said in Tokyo he had proposed the lobbying plan in letters to all executives of the organisation.
The medallists, including three-time Olympic champions Alexander Karelin of Russia and Saori Yoshida of Japan, are being asked to gather in the Russian city of St. Petersburg when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board meets on May 26-31.
“I have proposed that they lobby the IOC executives and hold rallies to state our case there,” Fukuda, also president of the Japan Wrestling Federation, told a news conference.
“We have been insufficient in lobbying the IOC. Russia has promised to mobilise all medallists, including Karelin,” he said.
Fukuda said he had also proposed the heads of all 180 national wrestling federations write a letter to IOC president Jacques Rogge asking him to help keep the sport part of the Games.
Earlier this month the 15-member IOC executive voted to drop wrestling from the Olympic programme. The sport has been part of every modern Olympics, apart from in 1900.
It will remain on the programme for 2016 in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion in 2020, a Games that Tokyo is bidding to host.
The St. Petersburg meeting is expected to narrow the number of sports—possibly to three—that should be put forward to the 100-plus IOC members in Buenos Aires in September when they select just one survivor for 2020. The other sports are baseball and softball, squash, karate, roller sports, wakeboarding, sport climbing and the Chinese martial art of wushu.
Representatives of these sports are due to make presentations to the board.
Yoshida, who won the women’s 55kg freestyle gold at last year’s London Games for a record 13th straight Olympic or world championship title, told the same news conference that she might go to St. Petersburg.
“I started wrestling after seeing it in the Olympics on television. There are children who started wrestling after they saw me competing,” she said. “I want to cooperate with the presentation in an effort not to destroy children’s dreams.”
Fukuda returned from FILA’s weekend executive meeting in the Thai resort of Phuket where Switzerland’s Raphael Martinetti was ousted as its president after being largely held to blame for the sport’s misfortune.
Nenad Lalovic of Serbia was appointed acting president until September.
Fukuda said Martinetti was ousted in a 11-10 vote.
“There was an overwhelming criticism against him for not attending the IOC executive board meeting or lobbying aggressively,” he said.