KEEP WRESTLING IN THE OLYMPICS
Communication was key in winning Olympic fight
By Bob Condron The sport of wrestling learned some-
thing from its brothers in boxing last February. “Watch out for the left hook.” That punch came out of nowhere on
the afternoon of February 12th and land- ed squarely on the jaw of Olympic wrestling. It was launched in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the Executive Board of the IOC. The organization’s most power- ful and influential committee voted on 25 sports that would form the core program for the Olympic Games for the foresee- able future. And Wrestling wasn’t on the list. A sport that started the Olympic Games
2,700 years ago and might be the Core Sport of All Time, was somewhere around 26th in the voting for the top 25. It was the Wake Up Call of the Century
for the sport that is painted on cave walls of long past millineums. February 12th was a busy day for the
leaders of wrestling around the world. The Russians were angry, the social
media contingent of the U.S. went ballis- tic. In Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, Mongolia, India…people were going on hunger strikes, returning Olympic medals. Blood pressure medicine was flying off the shelves. Amazement came from grand- mothers who didn’t know a gut wrench from a crescent wrench. And the dreams of 10 year-old future wrestlers across the world seemed to fade. Not a real good day for wrestling fans. But, the sport thought to have stagnat-
ed and grown weary and old, did what wrestlers for generations have done. They got up and went on the attack and refused to die. FILA, the international federation locat-
ed a few miles from where the meeting in Lausanne took place, began to change. President Raphael Martinetti resigned in a Bureau meeting in Thailand and was replaced by Serbian Nenad Lalovic, a
Bob Condron, former director of media services for the U.S. Olympic Committee, played a critical role in the Olympic fight as the press officer for FILA.
large and charismatic guy who’s basic tie to wrestling was watching his son on the mat and serving as president of the Serbian Wrestling Federation. But, he was an astute businessman who was successful and he learned relationships from his father who was ambassador to six countries for Yugoslavia. It was Day One of a new organization
and the beginning of a sport that had seven months to survive in the Olympics. Like all matches, you always have a chance. And wrestling got that chance when they were added to seven other sports to battle for one spot as an “Additional Sport” on the Olympic pro- grams for 2020 and 2024. The others had been campaigning for two years, wrestling now had four months to prove its case and reverse an IOC decision by its highest committee. It wasn’t a one-man battle. The agen-
cies came, the consultants, advisors, the volunteers. FILA hired Teneo, an agency out of New York City and Atlanta, who prepared the presentation for the IOC sessions and set up social media, com- munications and international consulting. The small FILA staff tripled their work- load.
There was a media specialist who
came to the headquarters in Switzerland, a castle built in the 1600’s with a huge courtyard full of statues of wrestlers every few meters in stages of various throws, poses and attire. Lake Geneva was in the foreground and the French Alps were in the distance. It all culminated in a place called Corsier-Sur-Vevey. My new hometown. The guy that walked into this postcard
was me. I became the first person in gen- erations to answer the phone at FILA
Continued on page 38 USA Wrestler 5
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