(ATR) Vice President Anthony Goh tells Around the Rings the International Wushu Federation will do its best as the race for the 2020 Olympics heats up.
"We are excited" about IWUF’s first time on the IOC shortlist, he says from Beijing, his new home base after 30 years of business in Baltimore.
"Once we were recognized by the IOC in 2002, we started revising our competition rules to make the judging less subjective."
After staging its first junior world championships in 2006 and a demonstration of sorts at Beijing 2008, wushu was added to the World Games in 2009 and the inaugural SportAccord Combat Games in 2010.
The sport will also be included in the cultural program of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
"We’re pushing it," the IWUF VP tells ATR.
"We’re really trying to make it more consistent with the Olympic formats of competition and also to spread it out" to other areas of the world.
Rooted in traditional Chinese martial arts and considered the country’s national sport, wushu is better known elsewhere as kung fu.
With member federations in 145 countries, it’s more popular in some regions than others, Goh admits, but would bring a "different culture" to the Games.
"The use of the weapons would also be very different for the Olympics," he adds.
IOC inspectors witnessed the contrast firsthand when wushu welcomed an evaluation team to its World Junior Championship in September as part of a series of visits to each of the seven shortlisted sports.
Cable wakeboard, karate, roller sports, squash, wushu and a joint bid by baseball/softball are the other six contenders facing a decision of the IOC Executive Board in May 2013.
"Some of the others are very strong as well," says Goh, stressing the "very positive" response he received from the IOC.
Because the world champs were for juniors, IWUF actually staged an adult demonstration as well to showcase elite wushu to the IOC delegation.
Also in Macau, federation leaders met with the IOC and were given "very valuable" and "very encouraging" advice regarding their December presentation to the Program Commission and what events they should propose.
The plan, according to Goh, is to ask for 72 athletes competing across four events: men's long fist, broadsword and long staff (one medal for all around); men's taiji fist and taiji sword (one medal for all around); women's long fist, sword and spear (one medal for all around); and women's taiji fist and taiji sword (one medal for all around).
In the meantime, he tells ATR, wushu has no formal campaign or PR strategy around its Olympics campaign, instead relying on IOC member and IWUF president Zaiqing Yu to lobby on behalf of the bid.
"We’re going to do our best," he says.
"We know it’s quite challenging, but we’re going to do our best."
Reported by Matthew Grayson
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
