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OLYMPICS

IOC votes to drop wrestling from Olympics

Wrestling, an Olympic sport since the first Games in ancient Greece, looks set to be dropped after the Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee on Tuesday voted to remove it from the programme for 2020.

Published: 12 February 2013 17:25 CET
IOC votes to drop wrestling from Olympics
IOC headquarters in Lausanne. Photo: Arnaud Gaillard

The decision, taken by the 15 members of the IOC executive board in the Vaud capital leaves the sport grappling against seven other disciplines for inclusion at the Games, the location of which will be decided later this year.

"It's a real shock. Wrestling was not on the radar," an IOC source told AFP.

"It was a very close vote between wrestling and modern pentathlon, maybe one or two votes separating them. The trouble was while modern pentathlon and taekwondo did effective lobbying, wrestling thought they were safe and did none at all."

The loss of wrestling, which will remain on the programme for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, sees the likely disappearance of one of the few sports that survived from the ancient Games to those founded in the modern era by Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

It first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever not appeared at an Olympic Games in 1900.

The sport, which includes freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, still has a slim chance of regaining its berth as all IOC members at the body's congress vote on the decision in Buenos Aires in September.

Going against the executive committee vote would be unlikely but not impossible if some IOC members not on the board vote against the decision in anger at being presented with a virtual fait accompli.

Also lobbying for inclusion in 2020 are squash, roller sports — which both failed in previous bids — softball/baseball, karate, wushu, which is popular at the Asian Games, the water sport wakeboard and sport climbing.

Squash and karate are generally seen to be leading the race to win the sole spot for the 2020 Games which will be held in either Tokyo, Madrid or Istanbul.

Softball and baseball, which were ditched as Olympic sports for the 2012 Games in favour of golf and rugby sevens, have united this time round to regain a spot and will learn their fate at a meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, in May.

The survival of modern pentathlon is a major coup for Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior, vice-president of the sport's governing body and a member of the IOC executive board, who is also a prominent member of Madrid's bid for the 2020 Games.

The discipline had generally been seen to be at risk as it is expensive to compete in and does not attract a broad range of nations entering.

Invented by de Coubertin, it first appeared at the 1912 Games and consists of five disciplines: fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting.

The idea behind it stemmed from the skills required to be a 19th century cavalry officer.

One of its most famous exponents was legendary US Second World War General George Patton, who finished fifth in the 1912 Games.

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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