IOC has wrestling on the mat
Huynh and Igali headed for Moscow in attempt to keep sport in Games
Carol Huynh will board a plane to Moscow next week to help try to save the future of her sport at the Olympics.
Huynh’s arrival in Russia will be part of an important month of May, where the wrestling community will convene with its world governing body before a pivotal presentation to the IOC — also in Moscow — at the end of the month.
“It’s going to be a big month without question,” Huynh said Thursday at the Athletes Summit in Toronto for the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Games (TO2015).
Huynh joined over 40 of Canada’s top Olympic and Paralympic athletes who were given a tour of the proposed village and venue sites, and listened to medal winning athletes like Alex Bilodeau and Rosie MacLennan address the importance of competing on home soil. The 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Games will be the first major athletic games ever in Toronto, and after Thursday’s summit, many of the athletes were encouraged with the developmental phase, which will bring many world class training facilities to Toronto for the future.
Huynh’s, Canada’s first female wrestling gold medallist (2008 Beijing) and the defending Commonwealth and Pan Am champion, was jolted like every other competitor in her sport when the IOC targeted wrestling for deletion from the Olympics after the 2020 Games.
She was selected, along with Canada’s Daniel Igali, as part of a sixmember team of the world’s top wrestlers and executives to travel to Moscow. A meeting there next weekend with the sport’s global governing body will be followed by a presentation May 29 to the IOC. “There are eight sports (targeted for deletion), but three of them will (get a reprieve), and we have to get into that group of three,” Huynh said. The IOC has yet to ratify their decision on wrestling, which gives Huynh and her sport hope. On Thursday, she supported a sol- id showing of Canada’s top athletes, who toured the Pan Am venues, but were also encouraged to act as ambassadors for the games, and to contribute to the organizing committees to ensure the best possible games for Toronto. Bilodeau had prepared notes for his speech about the significance of competing in front of a home crowd, but discarded them part way through. He then spoke from the heart about preparation and his mindset just before he blasted down the moguls to a gold medal at the Vancouver 2010 Games.
Bilodeau, who was introduced by MacLennan, London gold medallist in trampoline, told his fellow athletes of a solo trip up the hill on a chairlift, where he was alone with his thoughts.
“All kinds of things (were) going through my mind, and I said to myself, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Bilodeau said, drawing laughter from his audience, many of whom have gone through similar scenarios. Paralympic swimmer Issac Bouckley, 19, from Port Hope, realized like many of the Toronto area athletes that TO2015 could be the only time in their athletic careers that they will have the opportunity to compete in a major games on home soil.