By Will Carlin
It was a bad call.
No, not the one that put wrestling back in the Olympic Games at the expense of squash (and baseball/softball). And no, it wasn’t the decision back in February that gave wrestling its near-death experience when the executive board voted not to include it in the core program of twenty-five Olympic sports for the 2020 and 2024 Games.
The bad decision was to put one of the Olympics’ oldest and most revered sports into the pool of new sports vying to get into the 2020 Games.
Maybe calling it “bad” is even a little harsh; it came as a result of a series of good intentions that perhaps simply lacked foresight.
It started at the beginning of Jacques Rogge’s term as IOC President when he stated his laudable intention to have the Games hosted by two continents where the Olympics had never been held: South America and Africa.
A related good intention was to try to help control the spiraling costs of putting on the Games (if it were cheaper to put on the Games, the two financially-strapped continents would more likely be able to put together a winning bid).
In an effort to help control costs, the IOC decided to cap the number of “core” sports, thus limiting the number of athletes and facilities needed to host the Games.
Another good intention was to give sports that had never been included in the Olympics a road map for inclusion and a process that would result in the regular influx of new sports into the Games. This was, in fact, overdue.
Until this process was unveiled, it wasn’t even clear what was defined as a “sport.” Chess, bridge, auto racing, ballroom dancing, and poker all wanted in, and without a process or clarification on what constituted a sport, they all made serious attempts.
The new process includes definitions that has eliminated some of these (“mental” sports, including chess, bridge and poker, are no longer eligible; and “motor” sports, including auto racing, powerboat racing and water-skiing, aren’t either) and a list of qualifying criteria. All good so far.
But with competing goals to limit the number of athletes by limiting the number of core sports and to give new sports a process to get in, the only way to reconcile the two is to eliminate a core sport in order to admit a new one.
Baseball and softball were the first casualties: in 2005, the two sports were told that they would be out as of 2012. Though no new sports were added for 2012, those two spots will be taken by golf and rugby in 2016.
With a new sport to be added for the 2020 Games, another core sport would have to be eliminated. As we all know, that was wrestling.
The decision to eliminate wrestling was another good intention gone awry. With flagging interest, bad leadership, and complicated scoring, the IOC had asked wrestling to get its house in order for a number of years. Frustrated by wrestling’s cavalier attitude, the IOC took drastic action.
It wasn’t a bad way to get them to pay attention, but the IOC wasn’t ready for the worldwide uproar. When baseball and soft- ball were eliminated, they were told to come back in four years and apply for the 2016 Games; with the tumult of the wrestling decision, however, the IOC back-stepped quickly and said they could reapply for reinstatement six months later.
As the Wall Street Journal said, “Even wrestling’s strongest proponents concede that this move bore the hallmarks of a card trick: ‘There is a lot of sentiment that this process has been a disservice to sports that have worked hard to gain acceptance and then have to compete with an existing sport,’ said Jim Scherr, a former U.S. Olympic Committee chairman and a leader of wrestling’s re-entry campaign.”
As we all now know, the “new” sport being added to the 2020 Games is, in fact, one of its oldest.
In the wake of this huge disappointment, many squash leaders and pundits are looking internally at our sport and ruminating on perceived problems with squash. Noble as that kind of thinking is, sometimes the deck is stacked, and it doesn’t matter how well you played.
Squash, in fact, has reason to feel good. It was the clear winner in the game it thought it was playing: being the best new sport to be considered for inclusion. And in the game that it was actually playing, competing against two sports applying for reinstatement, a quarter of the IOC still voted for squash.
There also is reason to have some optimism for the future: with Rogge’s term now ended, there already is talk about increasing the number of core sports and about improving the process (probation as a first step, concluding the reinstatement process before new sports start their campaigns, and having a waiting period before an unsuccessfully reinstated sport can enter the new sport pool).
The question for squash is whether it wants to go after the elusive prize again. There is nothing more frustrating than having a match turn on a bad call, and many squash players are tired, discouraged and depressed, wondering whether it might be time for the madness to end.
A week before the IOC decision, another athlete must have had similar thoughts running through her mind as she was making her fifth attempt since 1978 to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage. She was able to put those thoughts aside, however, and at age 64, she accomplished her thirty-five-year goal and completed the swim in fifty-three long and brutal hours.
Her accomplishment got worldwide attention and stories about her went into some depth about her endurance swimming feats. What only a few mentioned, however, was that before becoming known for endurance swimming, Diana Nyad was a professional squash player.
We are nothing if not perseverant.
Bad calls be damned.
