Wrestling
Author：tercal From： Updated：2007-11-30
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If the Olympic Games are a history of mankind, wrestling is the prologue. When the ancient Games of the Olympiad were born, wrestling already was an ancient game. Widely recognised as the world's oldest competitive sport, wrestling appeared in a series of Egyptian wall paintings as many as 5000 years ago. When the Games began in 776 BC, more than two millenniums later, it included wrestling, and, in the years that followed, wrestling featured as the main event.
The sport would return in a similar role when the Olympic Games returned after a 1500-year absence in 1896. Organisers, seeking direct links to ancient times, found a natural in the sport that had enjoyed popularity across much of the ancient world, from Greece, Assyria and Babylon to India, China and Japan. They resurrected Greco-Roman wrestling, a style they believed to be an exact carryover from the Greek and Roman wrestlers of old.
In Greco-Roman wrestling, the wrestlers used only their arms and upper bodies to attack. They could hold only those same parts of their opponents. It worked nicely from a historical perspective, but another breezier style was sweeping across Great Britain and the United States by then. Known as "catch as catch can", it had become standard fare - and popular professional entertainment - at fairs and festivals in both countries.
In 1904, the Olympic Games added the second wrestling event and called it "freestyle". Now, wrestlers could use their legs for pushing, lifting and tripping, and they could hold opponents above or below the waist.
Disciplines' origin
Freestyle
With the possible exception of track and field (athletics), wrestling is the most ancient sport known to have been continuously practised competitively. Wrestling was introduced into the ancient Olympics in 708 BC, shortly after the Games' recorded history began in 776 BC. Wrestling pre-dates the ancient Olympic Games. Cave drawings of wrestlers from 3000 BC in the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation have been found. Similar wall paintings exist from ancient Egyptian civilisations circa 2400 BC.
There are literally hundreds of styles of wrestling world-wide today, with many nations having indigenous forms. Among these are Glíma wrestling in Iceland, Schwingen wrestling in Switzerland, and Cumberland wrestling in Britain.
But there are four main forms of amateur competitive wrestling practised internationally today: Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling, judo wrestling and sombo wrestling. Judo is considered a separate sport at the Olympics. Sombo is a combination of freestyle and judo and is most popular in the republics of the former Soviet Union, but it has not yet been contested in the Olympics.
Freestyle wrestling is similar to American collegiate style, or folkstyle wrestling. Holds are relatively unlimited, provided they are not dangerous, and can be applied to any part of the body. Greco-Roman wrestling limits holds to the upper body.
Greco-Roman
With the possible exception of track and field (athletics), wrestling is the most ancient sport known to have been continuously practised competitively. Wrestling was introduced into the ancient Olympics in 708 BC, shortly after the Games' recorded history began in 776 BC. Wrestling pre-dates the ancient Olympic Games.
Cave drawings of wrestlers from 3000 BC in the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation have been found. Similar wall paintings exist from ancient Egyptian civilisations circa 2400 BC. There are literally hundreds of styles of wrestling world-wide today, with many nations having indigenous forms.
Among these are Glíma wrestling in Iceland, Schwingen wrestling in Switzerland, and Cumberland wrestling in Britain. But there are four main forms of amateur competitive wrestling practised internationally today: Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling, judo wrestling and sombo wrestling.
Judo is considered a separate sport at the Olympics. Sombo is a combination of freestyle and judo and is most popular in the republics of the former Soviet Union, but it has not yet been contested in the Olympics. Freestyle wrestling is similar to American collegiate style, or folkstyle wrestling. Holds are relatively unlimited, provided they are not dangerous, and can be applied to any part of the body. Greco-Roman wrestling limits holds to the upper body.
Reducing the number of classes from 10 to 7 for freestyle and Greco-Roman allowed four classes of women's wrestling to be introduced at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
Olympic history
Freestyle
Wrestling was on the programme at the first modern Olympics in 1896, and 1900 was the only year that wrestling did not feature on the programme at all. Both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling have been consistently contested at the
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