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The 2024 USA Olympic Wrestling Team

SlipperyPete12

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May 11, 2021
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The 2024 USA Olympic Wrestling Team

Men's Freestyle Team:

57kg- Spencer Lee
65kg- Zain Retherford
74kg- Kyle Dake
86kg- Aaron Brooks
97kg- Kyle Synder
125kg- Mason Paris

Women's Freestyle Team:
50kg- Sarah Hildebrandt
53kg- Dominique Parrish
57kg- Helen Maroulis
62kg- Kayla Miracle
68kg- Amit Elor
76kg- Kennedy Blades

Men's Greco Team:
60kg- Dalton Roberts
67kg- Ellis Coleman
77kg- Kamal Bey
87kg- Payton Jacobson
97kg- Josef Rau
130kg- Adam Coon

Let me know if there are any errors. Who else is qualified?
 
Looking at the Greco weights, I'd like to see 60kg, 67kg , 77kg, 87kg , 97kg and 130kg as the freestyle weights. I'll bet RBY and Zain would agree.
 
Why aren’t there more weights?
Not sure if that's rhetorical or not. There were going to be zero weights, because:
  1. The IOC is corrupt AF
  2. The IOC wants TV ratings, and wrestling is actually not really very popular compared to the sports they're introducing.
  3. The IOC was upset at all the corruption/cheating (yes, that's massively ironic).
  4. The IOC thought it was too expensive to pay for venues/event staff for all the combat sports (boxing, bjj, tae kwan do, greco, mfs, wfs, etc).
The wrestling community rallied like crazy and convinced them to bring it back, but with limited brackets (hence all the hullabaloo about qualifying weigths), and a limited number of brackets to limit cosdts.

Did I miss anything?
 
Not sure if that's rhetorical or not. There were going to be zero weights, because:
  1. The IOC is corrupt AF
  2. The IOC wants TV ratings, and wrestling is actually not really very popular compared to the sports they're introducing.
  3. The IOC was upset at all the corruption/cheating (yes, that's massively ironic).
  4. The IOC thought it was too expensive to pay for venues/event staff for all the combat sports (boxing, bjj, tae kwan do, greco, mfs, wfs, etc).
The wrestling community rallied like crazy and convinced them to bring it back, but with limited brackets (hence all the hullabaloo about qualifying weigths), and a limited number of brackets to limit cosdts.

Did I miss anything?
I don't think #4 is quite right. Comcast is giving the IOC almost $8B. Financially, the iOC can afford to keep an arena open for another day.

There are several capacity issues. All sports have to fit within the 2-week window, including facility access.

There is only so much airtime available. Streaming helps, OTOH I would hate for any sport to be relegated to streaming-only.

Also, the Olympic Village must have enough beds and dining facilities for all athletes, coaches, trainers, athletics officials from all countries, plus the IOC and their strap-hangers. It's on the order of 15k beds and they're not bunkering up like a hostel. The IOC is pretty stringent about limiting the numbers of all of these people (well, maybe not their lackeys).

Plus the Olympics are a proven big money-loser for the host cities. Most host cities have inadequate athletic facilities and housing -- so that's a lot of expensive construction, that typically is partially subsidized at a loss by state/provincial and national governments. They want capacities kept near their minimum.
 
that’s totally fair. I was kind of shorthanding that bullet point. Did they have separate venues for some of the combats sports prior to the choice to remove wrestling?
 
Why aren’t there more weights? I’m still dumbfounded as to the Olympic acceptance of other new sports but limit an original and still popular worldwide sport. Stupid! Hoping John Smith can make it happen.
DEI is the reason although they’ll swear it’s something else.
 
that’s totally fair. I was kind of shorthanding that bullet point. Did they have separate venues for some of the combats sports prior to the choice to remove wrestling?
I wouldn't separate it by combat sports. There will be multiple arenas, and they'll probably assign the sport according to facility capacity vs. historical attendance.

When I went to Atlanta, wrestling and boxing were held concurrently at different venues. Team handball was at a 3rd venue, which had the seating of a rural PA high school gym.

Hilariously, Atlanta team handball was no assigned seating. We bought our tickets just a few minutes before it started -- because we were nearby and tickets remained. Then it was a mad rush for seating. We sat just in front of some athletes' families, who were getting upset (understandably) at all the people like us who had no idea what was going on except when a ball went into the net. I felt bad for them.
 
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