Wrestling chief pays price for IOC snub
Source: AFP |
February 17, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
RAPHAEL Martinetti resigned as president of the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) yesterday after he was largely held to blame for the sport losing its spot at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Martinetti's position became untenable when the 15-man International Olympic Committee's Executive Board in Lausanne voted it off the program last Tuesday.
While the decision was greeted with widespread dismay not least by Switzerland's Martinetti, his plea to his fellow wrestling board members in Phuket, Thailand, that he should lead the fight to have it reinstated failed to convince them and he received only 50 percent of the votes.
"Mr Martinetti did not use his deciding vote to save his position and announced that he was resigning in order to allow the new president to resolve the situation," the federation said in a statement.
Wrestling will remain on the program for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion at the Games four years later. Another IOC Executive Board meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, in May will nominate the sport that should be put forward to all the members at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September.
One member said that there was a possibility that the wider IOC membership could vote wrestling back in. If they don't, however, it will see one of the few sports that survived from the original Olympics in ancient Greece into the modern era disappear.
Wrestling first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever been left out of the Olympic program once before in 1900.
Martinetti's position became untenable when the 15-man International Olympic Committee's Executive Board in Lausanne voted it off the program last Tuesday.
While the decision was greeted with widespread dismay not least by Switzerland's Martinetti, his plea to his fellow wrestling board members in Phuket, Thailand, that he should lead the fight to have it reinstated failed to convince them and he received only 50 percent of the votes.
"Mr Martinetti did not use his deciding vote to save his position and announced that he was resigning in order to allow the new president to resolve the situation," the federation said in a statement.
Wrestling will remain on the program for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion at the Games four years later. Another IOC Executive Board meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, in May will nominate the sport that should be put forward to all the members at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September.
One member said that there was a possibility that the wider IOC membership could vote wrestling back in. If they don't, however, it will see one of the few sports that survived from the original Olympics in ancient Greece into the modern era disappear.
Wrestling first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever been left out of the Olympic program once before in 1900.
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