Fila President Martinetti Resigns

Feb 15, 2013 by Willie Saylor

Martinetti Resigns

Willie Saylor, Editor

Amid the debacle that is the unconscionable decision to remove wrestling from the Olympics, FILA President, Raphael Martinetti has resigned.

Martinetti has been the president of the world governing body of wrestling since 2002 when he succeeded Milan Ercegan of Yugoslavia. His resignation comes at the time when he failed to sustain wrestling as a viable Olympic sport, as evidenced by the International Olympic Committee's Tuesday vote to eliminate wrestling from the Games in 2020, barring a reverse vote in September.

FILA is in the course of a regularly schudeled meeting in Phuket, Thailand, where the decision was made and formally announced.

Martinetti came under heat several times in his tenure, often caving to the pressures of the IOC and conceding his position, and with it, the rules of the sports we knew as Freestyle and Greco Roman Wrestlling.

The latest pressure, obviously, comes after he wasn’t proactive enough to defend the status of wrestling as Olympic sport above and beyond the campaigns of marginal events, including that of the Modern Pentathlon, which has a global membership less than 1% of that of wrestling.

Among the criticism from the International Olympic Committee, was that in the ten-year reign under Martinetti, FILA had failed to create a counsel of wrestling with representatives from athletes themselves, women, physicians, or officials.