Vegas Wins Wrestling Worlds; No Changes to Rio Regatta; IAAF Goes "Inside Athletics"

Vegas Wins Wrestling Worlds

Las Vegas will host the 2015 World Wrestling Championships, the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles decides.

"Sin City" beat out rival bids from Panama City, Panama; New Delhi, India; Tehran, Iran as well as Winter Olympics host Sochi at a weekend meeting of the FILA Bureau in Phuket, Thailand.

"We trust them with one of our most sacred and important properties, the 2015 World Championships, which is the qualifying event for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro," acting FILA president Nenad Lalovic announced Tuesday in a statement distributed by USA Wrestling.

"Hosting the World Championships in Las Vegas is certainly a positive step forward in our quest to show the world the relevance of wrestling and help entrench our sport on the Olympic program," said the Serb, referring to wrestling’s recent snub from the IOC.

USOC CEO Scott Blackmun added: "We’re excited to team with USA Wrestling and FILA in bringing this important event to the United States and we look forward to hosting wrestlers from all over the globe as they look to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games."

USA is a five-time host of the World Wrestling Championships, the last in 2003. Orleans Arena in Las Vegas is the venue for September 2015.

No Changes to Rio Regatta

Rowing will not add women's lightweight single sculls to the Olympics regatta at Rio 2016.

Over the weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark, delegates to the quadrennial FISA Extraordinary Congress dropped the event proposal, according to an Associated Press report.

A bid to nix the men’s coxed pair also failed, while the reintroduction of women’s four at the world championships was approved.

The regatta at London 2012 featured six events for women and eight for men, a breakdown that now applies to Rio 2016 as well.

Under the Olympic Charter, any new events require the approval of the IOC three years in advance of the Games.

Squash Sets Twitter Trend

Leaders of the World Squash Federation are trying to get the sport trending on Twitter.

"Our 144 Member Federations and the leading players on the PSA and WSA World Tours are really getting behind this initiative to encourage as many fans as possible to register their support for our Olympic campaign," says President N Ramachandran.

"The next few months are crucial to our bid and using social media to demonstrate the huge passion there is for squash to become part of the Olympic Games is important as we head towards our presentation to the IOC Executive Board in May."

Using the ID @vote4squash and hashtag #vote4squash, the sport is so far trending in Malaysia, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Squash is competing against karate, roller sport, sport climbing, wakeboard, wrestling, wushu as well as a joint bid by baseball and softball for consideration by EB members at their May meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia with one or more to be recommended for a vote of the IOC Session scheduled for September in Buenos Aires.

IAAF Goes "Inside Athletics"

A new social media experience will take fans "Inside Athletics" via IAAF Athlete Ambassador Ato Boldon.

"Beginning today, each weekly episode will focus on a different theme, ranging from analyzing current World records – such as Usain Bolt’s 100m record, Aries Merritt’s 110m Hurdles record or David Rudisha’s 800m record – to seeing who might challenge the more dominant athletes in the sport, like Anna Chicherova and Ivan Ukhov," the IAAF said Tuesday.

But as the title of the show suggests, Inside Athletics will also give an insight into what elite athletes experience during competition, so that fans will get to see what it is like in the call room before the event, how athletes manage stress, deal with the media and doping controls and how they find ways to relax on tour."

Click here to watch the first episode.

Media Watch

Around the Rings Editor Ed Hula discusses wrestling’s exclusion from the IOC list of 25 "core sports" for the 2020 Olympics in this week’s episode of Slate podcast "Hang Up and Listen".

Written by Matthew Grayson

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