Cael Sanderson says wrestling should get back to basics - USA Today

[TomM]

Cael Sanderson says wrestling should get back to basics - USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2013/05/01/cael-sanderson-wrestling-fight-olympics/2127343/

Steve Berkowitz and Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY Sports4:27 p.m. EDT May 1, 2013

May is "World Wrestling Month" -- at least that's what the sport's international governing body has decreed.

So how to celebrate? Jake Herbert, who won silver at the London Games, tweeted two suggestions: "wear (your) singlet to school? family wrestling match?"

All excellent ideas.

As for Penn State coach Cael Sanderson, who won Olympic gold in 2004, he kicked off the occasion on the Nittany Lions' Coaches Caravan, a pep rally of sorts for fans headlined by football coach Bill O'Brien that makes stops at various East Coast cities.

Sanderson's team just won its third consecutive national title, but on the Olympic stage the sport is on life support. The IOC executive board surprisingly recommended the removal of wrestling from the Summer Olympics beginning in 2020. The IOC will meet from May 24-27 in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to recommend for 2020 inclusion among eight candidates: wrestling, baseball/softball (as a joint bid), karate, roller sports, sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding and wushu. The final vote will be made at the IOC general assembly in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"The fight's definitely on," Sanderson said Wednesday. "I can't imagine the IOC expected this kind of fight, but I don't think you'd have the same intensity if they would have dropped a different sport outside of one of the top 10 sports. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things, and that's probably the only way that it's going to get changed.

"I just can't imagine

[ramjet]

Absolutely 100% true.

[imwi]

Jake Herbert got Silver in London?  He was the world silver medalist in 2009, he did not place in London.  Not Tom's issue, he just posted the article but if you are going to write an article about wrestling in the Olympics, you'd think they get the Olympic wrestling results correct.

[ramjet]

FRG thats what makes FS so exciting to many.

[imnofish]

Good point about viewers not understanding the sport, but it doesn't matter how much we dumb it down for them, if they seldom get the chance to view it.  Our sport is losing the media war.  It's time for an aggressive media campaign that gives viewers plenty of prime time exposure and relevant instruction about international wrestling styles.  It will be expensive, so a funding mechanism needs to be devised and implemented.

Also, we need to make it more affordable for our own kids to get involved in these styles.  We used to have a lot more kids involved, before it became so expensive.  Those kids went on to at least be fans of freestyle and greco.  Now, by making it so expensive, we have literally shrunk the potential size of each future generation's fan base.