The dream of many young kids is to win an Olympic medal. Whether they win in swimming, track, gymnastics or wrestling. In February, however, the dream was killed for many young wrestlers. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted Wrestling out of the games. After tireless work from the sports world, wrestling will again be a part of the Olympic games. Not even a year after the committee voted wrestling out of the games, the same group has now voted it back in. It was one of the most shocking announcements ever made by the IOC back in February of 2013. Wrestling is one of the oldest sports involved in the Olympics, and we aren’t talking dating back to the 1800’s, more like 700 B.C.

When it was announced that wrestling would no longer be in the Olympics, the decision was immediately met with criticism. The social media world erupted in fury, with wrestlers like Jordan Burroughs, gold medal winner in the 2012 Olympics expressing their disappointment over Twitter. Campaigns such as “Save Olympic Wrestling” appeared all over the Internet, gaining international attention and uniting wrestlers all around the world.

Wrestling defeated baseball/softball, and squash in the final vote to be reinstated into the 2020 Olympic games. Wrestling received 49 votes, 25 more than baseball and softball, and 27 more than squash.

There were a lot of changes that the International Federation of Associated Wrestling (FILA) brought to the board that possibly helped the sport return to the games. The board added two weight classes for women, which is in time for the 2016 games. Scoring was also changed, the play will be more aggressive, and total points instead will decide the winner instead of the winner of two out of three periods.

The move to add wrestling back, and not baseball and softball will change the games. Softball was in the last Olympics, and the USA team was fun to watch, but the IOC decided that baseball and softball should be voted on together, as a package. This meant that with baseball being voted out so was softball. This will also be met with some criticism, but the IOC voted in favor of the sport that has been in the games since they began.

It never made sense for wrestling to be voted out of the games, according to The Washington Post, there are 177 wrestling federations on six continents, and there were seventy-one countries that qualified for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Out of the countries that qualified, twenty-nine different countries took home medals. The sport that had so many different countries participating in, was voted out, apparently for no reason.

When the IOC announced that wrestling was reinstated, the social media world again erupted, this time in praise. The hash tag “#SaveOlympicWresting” changed to “#SavedOlympicWrestling.” The sports community celebrated and praised the IOC for realizing their mistake and giving wrestling the final spot for the 2020 Olympic games.

Wrestling has always been, and now will continue to be one of the oldest sports in the Olympics, and also one of the most difficult. With everything that goes wrong with the Olympics, and the corruption in the IOC, this is a huge victory. The dream of many young kids to win an Olympic medal in wrestling lives on, thanks to the unrelenting work of the sports community.