Professor, Dr.Hab., Honored Master of Sport, three-times Olympic Champion A. Karelin
Postgraduate, three-times Olympic Champion A.B. Taymazov
Professor, Dr.Hab., Honorary Coach of Russia B.I. Tarakanov
Professor, PhD R.N. Apoiko                                     
Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education, Sports and Health, St. Petersburg

Keywords: Research Education School, wrestling, Olympic movement, trend, study, priority subjects, analysis, Olympics, medal

Background. It was back in the 1970ies that a Research Education School was founded under the Wrestling Theory and Practice (WTP) Department of P.F. Lesgaft National State University – largely through the efforts by Y.P. Zamyatin, V.V. Nelyubin and L.N. Radchenko. Particularly important were the contributions by Y.P. Zamyatin who chaired the WTP Department in the period of 1976 to 1986 and helped 17 PhDs make their ways to the science and by V.V. Nelyubin who rendered an outstanding service to the Department when reinforced it by a few leading sport practitioners including D.G. Mindiashvili, A.A. Karelin and B.V. Ivanyuzhenkov.

The next generation of researchers of the WTP Department (B.I. Tarakanov, A.G. Levitsky, S.N. Nikitin) continued working hard to develop the Research Education School and, resulting in 58 PhD and 11 Doctoral theses defended, plus 15 monographs, dozens of educational supplies, practical manuals and hundreds of research reports published on the priority mastery-, age- and gender-specific issues of the wrestlers’ training processes. Mentioned first among the researchers who defended their theses at the WTP Department should be D.G. Mindiashvili, RAS Academician, who was a leader of the national wrestling team for many years; A.A. Karelin, Honorary Master of Sport, Hero of Russia, three-times Olympic Champion and the RF Parliament Member; Y.V. Avdeyev, Saint Petersburg Government Member and Physical Culture and Sports Committee Chairman; B.V. Shestakov, RF Parliament Member and the International Sambo Federation President; B. Goranov, General Secretary of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee; V.G. Manolaki, Principal of the Moldavian Physical Culture and Sports University; G.P. Briusov, First Vice-President of the Russian Federation of Competitive Wrestling; 12 Honorary Coaches of Russia; more than 20 International Class Masters of Sport and Masters of Sport in different wrestling disciplines. Geographically, the fields of activity of the Research Education School of the Wrestling Theory and Practice (WTP) Department have also been very wide, as its specialists have been long and efficiently working in 16 cities across Russia and in at least seven other countries, namely Cuba, Poland, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In the year of 2013, the Research Education School under the Wrestling Theory and Practice Department of P.F. Lesgaft National State University with its formal mission of “Theoretical and practical grounds for and improvement of the wrestlers’ training systems in different wrestling disciplines” was registered by a decision of the Research and Engineering Panel of the Saint Petersburg Government and Committee for Science and Higher School with the Register of Leading Research and Research Education Schools of Saint Petersburg.

The above brief overview of the progress made by the Research Education School gives us fair grounds to acknowledge its high efficiency and good opportunities for further progress.

Objective of the study was to make an analysis of Russian competitive wrestling as a priority field for research by P.F. Lesgaft National State University.

Study results and discussion. The key research fields for the Research Education School may be listed as follows:

• Training process management and educational support for a variety of the skill-, age- and gender-specific training systems;
• Systemic analysis of the wrestling history in the context of the international Olympic movement;
• Multisided studies of every modern trend in and aspect of the competitive wrestling sport progress;
• Key trends in the modern competitive training systems including those triggered by revisions of the rules of competitions in different wrestling sport disciplines;
• Systemic studies of the content and designs of the long-term training systems applied in competitive wrestling sports;
• Studies and analyses of the junior wrestlers’ training systems with due consideration for the modern development trends in the children and adolescents’ sports;
• Studies to work out efficient training process profiling tests, reference standards and wrestlers’ performance and fitness rating systems;
• Wrestlers’ training process individualization initiatives to factor in the age-, gender-, skills- and weight-category-specifics in the training systems; and
• Women’s competitive training systems applicable in the relevant wrestling sport disciplines (freestyle wrestling and judo).

It is the systemic historic analysis of the competitive wrestling sport evolution in the context of the international Olympic movement and the ongoing adjustments to the elite wrestlers’ competitive training systems triggered by amendments to the rules of competitions that are ranked among the top priorities by the Research Education School under the Wrestling Theory and Practice Department. These two fields, however different they may look at first glance, are in fact closely interconnected since the intensive progress of competitive wrestling on the global arenas requires the rules of competitions and bout regulations being periodically revised and the revisions, in their turn, are of significant influence on the wrestlers’ competitive systems and performance profiles.

To analyze the modern trends in competitive wrestling sport in the context of the global Olympic movement on a comprehensive and multisided basis, we have collected and sorted out data on the wrestling team accomplishments of different nations in the modern Olympic Games in Greco-Roman, freestyle and women’s wrestling disciplines. The detailed analysis of the team accomplishments for the whole period of the modern Olympic Games showed that gold medals have been won by 33 nations, and 54 nations have been medal-winners of the Olympic Games. Leading in the team accomplishments are the Russian/ USSR wrestlers who have won 182 Olympic medals in total including 93 gold medals. Notably lagging behind but still firmly holding the second position are the US wrestlers who have won 128 Olympic medals including 52 gold ones. Going the third with a small edge over the following teams are the Swedish athletes who have won 84 medals in total including 29 gold medals. Ranked with the group of the strongest wrestling nations are also Finland with its 83 medals including 26 gold ones; Bulgaria (67 medals including 15 gold medals); Japan (66 medals including 28 gold medals); Turkey (59 medals including 28 gold medals); Hungary (53 medals including 19 gold medals); Germany (49 medals including 8 gold medals); Iran (37 medals including 8 gold medals); and South Korea (33 medals including 11 gold medals).

The domination of the Russian/ Soviet athletes looks even more striking considering the fact that they have competed in only 17 out of 27 modern-times Olympic Games in fact. Therefore, it may be counted that the national wrestlers have won 10.7 medals including 5.5 gold medals in every Olympics. Our closest rivals, the US athletes, who competed in 23 out of 27 modern-times Olympic Games, have won on average 5.6 medals including 2.3 gold medals in every Olympics. It should be also noted in this context that most of the medal stock of the Swedish and Finnish Olympic teams for the period was won in the first half of the 20^th century when they dominated on the Olympic arenas, and it is only due to this historic advantage that the Swedish and Finnish teams still formally hold their places in the global wrestling elite till now.

Furthermore, it should be mentioned that by the end of the last millennium the positions of the leading wrestling nations in the Olympic records had notably changed, with the collapse of the Soviet Union being likely the major reason for the changes. As a result, a few new nations forced their ways to the Olympic wrestling arenas and the competitions got more severe. Given in Table 1 hereunder are the consolidated accomplishments of the national teams in the Olympic Games in Greco-Roman, freestyle and women’s wrestling, starting from the XXVI Olympics of 1996.

Table 1. Consolidated accomplishments of the national teams in the Olympic Games in Greco-Roman, freestyle and women’s wrestling, starting from the XXVI Olympics of 1996

Note: The Table leaves off the national teams that have got only one silver or bronze medal for the study period (namely Spain, Macedonia, Mongolia, Moldavia, Puerto-Rico, Slovakia, Tajikistan and Estonia).

As one can see from above Table 1, the leading position of the Russian wrestling team have been recently reinforced since for the last five Olympics the team has won 48 medals including 25 gold ones, and this accomplishment is by far higher than that of the nearest rival, the US team, that has won 28 medals including 9 gold medals for the same period. Going the third are the Japanese athletes that have got 20 medals including 8 gold ones that means that they keep only one step behind the US team in the gold records. Showing good progress in the rankings have been the athletes from Iran (15 medals including 5 gold) and Cuba (14 medals including 5 gold). A few national wrestling teams have recently rushed into the pool of leading wrestling nations, namely Azerbaijan (15 medals including 4 gold), Ukraine (14 medals including 3 gold), Georgia (15 medals including 2 gold), Kazakhstan (14 medals including 1 gold) and Uzbekistan (7 medals including 4 gold). Still ranked high are the national teams of South Korea (12 medals including 4 gold) and Turkey (11 medals including 4 gold).

The recent high accomplishments of the above national teams made it possible for them to take the leading positions and push out of the leading pool many recognized leaders of the past periods including the national teams of Sweden, Finland, Hungary and Germany. It should be noted that these changes in the team standings were largely due to the growing accomplishments of the post-Soviet (NIS) and Russian national teams that have won in total 132 medals (making 43.3% of the total Olympic stock of awards) including 40 gold medals (44,4% of the Olympic golden stock).

Therefore, the study data and evolution/ trend analyses of the competitive wrestling sport progress within the international Olympic movement system demonstrate that the sport discipline holds descent positions and shows good progress (R.N. Apoiko, B.I. Tarakanov, 2015).

The above progress data and analyses show the decision of the IOC Executive Board on the competitive wrestling sport being excluded from the list of mandatory Olympic sport disciplines was obviously erroneous, and it is fairly clear that the IOC officials will unlikely ever come up with an unbiased reasoning for the decision. It is not improbable that there are no sound reasons at all.

On the other hand, the decision forced the FILA (UWW) management to critically revise their operations and come up with a set of very important initiatives in response. First, FILA (UWW) President Rafael Martinetti (from Switzerland) lost his position for the reason that most of the sport specialists tended to blame him for the public promotion aspects of the wrestling sport being notably on decline for his term at the office, and Nenad Lalovich from Serbia was elected a new FILA (UWW) President. Second, most popular Russian wrestler and three-times Olympic Champion Alexander Karelin was nominated to the FILA (UWW) Board and this nomination have notably reinforced the authority of our nation in the international sports management circles. Third, the regulations and rules of Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling competitions have been seriously revised and, among other things, the time of each period of a bout was increased from 2 to 3 minutes; technical action scoring system was reinstated in the rules, with the technical scores being summarized for the bout on the whole rather than each separate period; mandatory positioning of the wrestlers in turn-down was cancelled for Greco-Roman wrestling as it had notably scaled down their standing activity. Knowing that, the sport specialists have lately been eager to see the effects of the new amendments to the rules on the athletes’ activity in the bouts and the overall competitive performance in the sport.

In the attempt to trace these effects, we have performed a detailed analysis and summaries of the video captures and formal records of the 2014 and 2015 freestyle competitions in the Golden Grand Prix Ivan Yarygin tournament that is traditionally held in Krasnoyarsk city. Competing in the events were 433 leading Russian and foreign wrestlers from 20 countries. We made comprehensive analyses of more than 500 bouts in the competitions. The study data and comparisons with the similar data for the past periods (as reported by B.A. Podlivaev, 2001; V.V. Nelyubin, A.A. Karelin, 2002; Y.V. Avdeev, 2006; A.A. Karelin, 2006; Y.V. Avdeev et al., 2009; N.Y. Nerobeev, B.I. Tarakanov, 2013) showed a notable growth of the wins-by-fall (up to 8.3% in 2014 versus up to 8.8% in 2015). This finding gives the reasons to report fairly high activity of the wrestlers that may be due to the positive revisions of the rules of competitions and bout regulations as of 2013.

Since then, the leading freestyle wrestlers have performed technical actions scored by 2 points (65.3% in 2014 and 60.0% in 2015) or 1 point (26.6% in 2014 and 33.6% in 2015), with the proportions of the high-scoring 4-point actions being relatively low (8.0% in 2014 and 6.4% in 2015), although the activity has been still higher than at the beginning of the millennium.

The relative progress in the technical actions and their scoring has resulted in the wrestlers’ average performance scores being on the rise (1.90±0.04 points in 2014 and 1.79±0.03 in 2015); and this positive development has contributed to the overall quality of the bouts and, as a result, to the popularity of the wrestling sport competitions.

The wrestlers’ activity on the whole has notably increased since the rules of competitions were revised, with the top wrestlers estimated to perform on average 4.87±0/25 actions per bout in 2014 and 5.39±0.27 actions per bout in 2015 that were scored by 9.3±0.36 and 9.66±0.40 points, respectively. Average time of a bout was estimated at 5 to 5.5 minutes, with the resultant attack interval shrinking from 63.6±3.8 seconds as of 2014 to 62.5±3.7 seconds as of 2015.

Conclusion. The consolidated data and findings of the modern evolution history, development trends in the competitive wrestling sports and the effects of the latest (2013 following the London Olympics) revisions of the rules of freestyle wrestling competitions on the competitive and technical performance profiles of the leading athletes demonstrated a few positive trends including the notable activity growth in the wrestling bouts; growing success rates of the technical and tactical actions of the wrestlers; and notable growth of the wins-by-fall most appealing for the audience, and this progress obviously contributes to the Olympic positions of the competitive wrestling sport being firm for at least few decades to come.

The present study was performed pursuant to the Technical Order for the Research Project “Modern athletic training system development for the Olympic sport disciplines, with freestyle wrestling taken as a case study” under the relevant State Order as provided by the Ministry of Sports of Russia Order #318 of April 07, 2015.

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Corresponding author: yar-sunny@yandex.ru

Abstract

The article gives an overview of the research education school establishment, formation and further development prospects under the Wrestling Theory and Practice Department of P.F. Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education, Sport and Health, St. Petersburg. It lists the priority research thrusts for the school analysts as of now and gives an analysis of the competitive wrestling development trends in the modern Olympic movement. The competitive wrestling sport evolution and development prospects analysis demonstrates that this sport discipline holds descent positions and shows good progress.