Wrestling official to ask Turkey to help

International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) board member Rodica Yakşi said they would ask Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to contact the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in an attempt to halt the removal of wrestling from the organization. Yakşi, who was recently brought to the leading position of a FILA commission aiming to negotiate with the IOC following the committee’s Feb. 12 decision to leave wrestling out of the games, said she would ask the prime minister for support. “I will meet with the prime minister when I return, and we will ask him to contact the IOC,” Yakşi said. Yakşi, accompanied by FILA member Tomiaki Fukuda, will attend a series of meetings in Russia’s St. Petersburg. “A very difficult mission waits for me,” Yakşi said. “I am honored and excited. I will have no family and no other job until May, but saving wrestling is worth all that.” ICO removed wrestling from its list of 25 “core sports” from the 2020 Games in a move that cost the Olympics one of the oldest Olympic sports.

Wrestling, which combines freestyle and Greco-Roman events, goes back to the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.