North Ossetia starts action "Let's save Olympic wrestling"

On February 28, the city of Vladikavkaz started collecting signatures in favour of preserving the styles of wrestling – free, Greco-Roman and women's – in the Olympic programme. This is one of the elements of the action "Let's save Olympic wrestling", which was a reaction to the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to exclude wrestling from the Olympic programme.

On the first day, about 1000 signatures were collected; and the organizers of the action hope to collect several tens of thousands of them till this September. Then, the documents will be sent to the IOC.

According to volunteers Aslan Tsogoev and Zalina Daurova, within the first hour over 30 persons expressed their support to wrestling as Olympic sports. "We approached just occasional people, explained the idea of the action; and nobody refused to sign. Moreover, people expressed a wish to young people to work more in this direction," said Daurova.

In the opinion of Sergey Kononov, a resident of Vladikavkaz, the current situation around the Greco-Roman and free wrestling is worrying and looks like a threat that the spirit of rivalry can leave the world of sports, making every competition a sort of show.

As stated by Mikhail Mamiashvili, President of the Russian Federation of Sport Wrestling, in the Caucasus wrestling is a sort of a "cult"; it is a chance for the Caucasian youth to self-realize.