The New Zealand Wrestling Union is to make a determined effort to upskill its wrestlers to be more competitive internationally. 2002 saw the re emergence of a Junior programme when a small team visited the USA, the UK and Switzerland seeking training, and lots of competition. The tour was extremely successful and provided a template for further tours rather than trips for one off competitions.
The NZOWU realises that its wrestlers have to tour overseas to gain experience. Additionally the New Zealand public are not aware of the size of wrestling outside the Commonwealth where only Canada and India stand out on the world scene. Wrestling is understood to be ranked 7th in the number of participants in sport throughout the world. Eastern Europe, Asia and USA have huge numbers involved in the sport.
Before the breakup of the Soviet Union there were 12 million registered wrestlers and all of the new satellite countries evolving from this breakup have made it harder to gain Olympic entry. California USA have 2000 high schools with a wrestling team. Iran has more wrestlers than there are rugby players in the world. With these kinds of facts the NZOWU has a hard job to achieve world success but intend to give of its best.
In June 2005 the NZOWU has a large junior squad of up to 30 wrestlers touring five states in the USA. The Senior development team intends travelling to Russia for training and a tournament before moving onto the Commonwealth championships in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2006 it is hoped that the top two seniors can live and train in Russia for six months with a repeat in 2007. This should provide the experience to them attend the World Championships in 2007 and the resulting Olympic qualification tournaments prior to Beijing. Wrestlers will not achieve international success by staying in NZ.
The NZOWU is also seeking female competitors. Females participated in the Olympics for the first time this year where Japan, China and the USA stood out. While the NZOWU have many young females they wish to attract more Juniors (17 to 20) and seniors (21 and above) into competition.
The web site at https://www.olympicwrestling.org.nz/ is shortly to have a major revamp and become more informative with latest results and happenings within the sport being made available to its members and interested parties.
New rules have been introduced by FILA and they take effect from 1 January 2005. The first to experience these in international competition will be Daniel Harborne from Auckland who will be participating in the World Deaf Olympics in Melbourne in early January. Training in the off season is making it hard for Daniel and he has trouble getting workout partners.
