Barring a change of mind, the 2016 games in Rio de Janiero will be the last with wrestling as a competitive sport.
Now over to politics. Axis of Evil charter member Iran is an international force in wrestling and they have been for decades. While surprisingly not claiming that it's a Zionist plot, the Mehr News agency clearly sees the IOC move as an attack, calling the decision "politically motivated."
Mehr, while not part of the Iranian government, is wrestling-match-skin-to-skin close to it. If the name sounds familiar, it's the same agency that took seriously an Onion story that rural white Americans preferred to vote for Iran's madman president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over Barack Obama.
So the strike-back strategy is this: Mehr is asking its readers to "Freep," that is, to manipulate an online poll so wrestling gets the most votes in an ESPN survey asking which sport should be added to the 2020 games.
How is it working? Quite well. While surely not all of the votes are from Iran, wrestling is pinning its competitors--capturing as of this posting 86 percent of the vote.
As far as Iran and Mehr...well, their agenda is large.
Technorati tags: politics news farsi iran Persian current affairs culture olympics
No comments:
Post a Comment