#KeepOlympicWrestling COUNTDOWN – 1 day
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Gary Abbott (USA Wrestling)
09/07/2013
1 day until the IOC vote in Buenos Aires...
1 – Wrestling was a sport in the ancient Olympics in Greece and featured in first modern Olympic Games.
1 – First modern Olympic champion – Carl Schuhmann (Germany), 1896 Olympics in Athens, Greece. There was only one weight class.
Fact 1– Women’s wrestling was introduced to the Olympic Games in 2004 in Athens, Greece, has been contested in three straight Summer Olympic Games (2004, 2008, 2012). It will be expanded at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to six weight classes.
Fact 2 – The oldest known sports instructional document is a wrestling training manual, on an eight-inch piece of papyrus, found in Egypt and written in Greek. It is believed to be 2,000 years old. The original is housed in the Butler Library at Columbia University in the USA.
Fact 3 – The International Olympic Committee General Assembly will vote on Sunday, September 8 on one additional provisional sport for the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, choosing between wrestling, squash and the combined baseball/softball bid.
Help us raise wrestling's profile for the next 10 days.
• Post your #TakeAStance photos on social media.
• Vote for wrestling in the Inside the Games poll Click Here
• Post on social media why you believe wrestling should be in the Olympics
Editor’s Note: Each day, for 10 full days, USA Wrestling has done a countdown until the IOC General Assembly vote concerning wrestling remaining on the Olympic program. The entire wrestling community is asked to be very active in its support of wrestling in social media and other platforms.