Reprinted with permission from the FILA News    Athens will have the pleasure during the summer 2004 to see arriving on its soil the biggest world sport event after having been the founder of it, that is to say, the Olympic Games.    Wrestling, sport was at the origin of the Olympic Games, must on the occasion of these Games seriously link into what must be its future for the coming century.     Forsee the future does not mean to repudiate its past especially when the past is as glorious as that of wrestling throughout the history of humanity.     However, in a world where technical progress was more important during the last 50 years than throughout the two prior centuries, it goes for the survival of a sport to adapt itself to its era if that sport does not want to be shelved in the history.    Aware of the indissociable universality of its three styles, Freestyle, Greco-Roman and Feminine, FILA undertook the biggest consultation ever undertaken since its foundation, in order to question the National Federations through continential forums, conferences and enquiries on the future of wrestling for the coming years.     All bodies of the FILA, the Coaches' Department, the Referee's Department, the Executive Committee and the Bureau studied each proposal and established a document which was sent to all National Federations for examination and for testing at competitions on the occasion of Championships at a national and international level.     In Spring 2004, the FILA Bureau will prepare a final document which will be submitted to the Athens Olympic Congress, which will allow wrestling to achieve its velvet revolution and again find its place that can not be ignored in the Olympic programme and in the world sport concert.     What are the main lines that have until today been defined by all FILA organs as haveing priority the most important concerns, without any doubt, the competition system.    We are obliged to recognize that all attempts carried out so far to modify the competition system were unfruitful and led us from an unjust, complicated system and which neither satisfied the wrestlers, spectators and certainly not the media who cannot captivate readers or listeners with categories finishing over three days.     The proposal of the direct elimination for a weight category that finishes on one day with repechage for the wrestlers who lost with the two finalists must absolutely be set up. This modification accompanied by two bronze medals will make clear and interesting competitions by guaranteeing that the best will obligatory be amoung the medal winners.     Another fundamental modification that will serve to make the match more dynamic and to suppress the matches where the wrestlers score two or three points in the first minutes and then block the rest of the match with passive wrestling, monotonous for everybody, with the exception of the coach of the wrestler who wins, concerns the method and duration of a wrestling match.    The introduction of wrestling with periods of 2 minutes in the same way as a set in tennis, with a victory per period no matter what the score is, as well as the attribution of the victory of a period for a wrestler who marks a five-point hold or two three-point holds will make the match interesting from the beginning to the end. With a victory obtained with two winning periods and a third period if each wrestlers has won a period, we will have a real match within the match with all the emotional charge that this contains.     In such a system the victory by fall would of course keep all its symbolic since it definitely tops the match.     The modifications to the attribution of the points and the suppression of the limitation of repetition holds (gut wrench and ankle lace) must complete the provisions which have as an objective to allow wrestling to show all its value and its attractiveness.    To these measures will still be added (and many specialists work on this question) a greater differentiation between Freestyle and Greco-Roman style.    Even though this difference is obvious for the wrestling family and the wrestling specialist, it must absolutely be more marked, so as to definitely silence these insinuations on the similtude between the two styles.     These are the ideas which must give wrestling back all its originality and popularity at the dawn of the 21st century. Wrestling was and will always be the main sport of all civilization. This is FILA's reason for living and this must also be the reason for all wrestling leaders throughout the world.