Reuters Iran’s Sadegh Saeed Goudarzi and Jordan Ernest Burroughs of the U.S. on the medal podium at the London Olympics in 2012.LONDON â€" The decision of the Olympic authorities to drop wrestling from the Summer Games beginning in 2020 has floored fans of the ancient sport worldwide, and nowhere more so than in Iran.
Among Iranians, wrestling is a national sporting cult, the product of a millenarian tradition and a focus for nationalist aspirations.
Iran’s Mehr News was quick to conclude that the move by the International Olympic Committe was politically motivated. And a senior Iranian wrestling official said Iran would be joining other top nations in taking action to reverse it.
Iran’s prowess at wrestling â€" it won six medals in the sport at the London 2012 Games, including three golds â€" stems from a tradition that dates back to pre-Islamic times and was developed in the quasi-mystical practices of the Zoorkhaneh, the House of Strength.
It is a tradition that has survived regime changes and shifts in ideology, and enthusiasm emerged undimmed from the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Millad Ejraee, an Iranian who posted on a Saving Olympic Wrestling Facebook page, commented on Wednesday: “It’s been our national sport since thousands [of] years ago, but those stupid guys have made a nation tru! ly upset since yesterday with their silly decision.â€
An Iranian official who sits on the medical committee of FILA, the sport’s international governing committee, hinted that the crisis was serious enough to warrant support even from Iran’s ideological enemies.
Mohammad Tavakol told Iran’s national news agency that the United States was among countries, alongside Russia, Turkey, Japan and central Asian States, which would try to fight the removal of wrestling from the Summer Games calendar.
Sport is one area in which Iran has been able to maintain a tentative relationship with countries with which it is otherwise not on speaking terms.
In rare periods of détente since 1979, wrestling emerged as the focus of the kind of Ping-Pong diplomacy that broke the ice between theU.S. and China in the early 1970s.
In 1998, American wrestlers became the first of their country’s athletes to compete in Iran since the Tehran embassy hostage crisis, almost 20 years earlier.
John Marks, a conflict resolution expert, who helped arrange the fixture, said it was an example of how sports could serve as a tool in dealing with violent conflict.
He said the 13,000 Iranian fans cheered both teams. “The crowd clearly came out to see the Americans. Whenever a U.S. wrestler competed, the place became electric.â€
Although wrestling failed to work the diplomatic magic that table tennis had done in the case of Beijing, athletes from the U.S. and Iran have continued to encounter each other, to the delight of Iranian fans.
When American wrestlers arrived in Iran in 2007 for the Persian Gu! lf Cup they were warmly greeted by young girls in traditional Iranian dress and handed bouquets of flowers.
If wrestling does end up being dropped from the Olympic Games, despite the best efforts of Iranian, American and other sporting nations, it will mean one less venue at which sport will have an opportunity to trump politics.
Iran will continue to compete in, and even to host, international sporting events. Its women skiers are competing this month at the Alpine World Championships in Austria.
It is debatable, however, whether women’s skiing can do for international relations what Ping-Pong did for the U.S. and China, or what wrestling might have done.
Whether you’re a wrestling fan or not, do you agree with the thesis that sport can be a tool in building bridges with political enemies And, if so, is the threatened loss of wrestling at the Olympics a blw to diplomacy as well as to the sport
