Sometimes stuff gets lost in translation as a result of the English language's tightening grip over the Olympic Movement, at the expense of French.

Take the currently hot topic of wrestling, for instance.

Even in English, the concept has metaphorical resonance: we wrestle with a problem, for example; and with our consciences.

In French, though, the word for wrestling – "lutte" – has entered the lexicon so comprehensively that I would say it is used much more outside a sporting context than within.

It is one of the commonest words for conveying the idea of a fight or struggle.

And I would say consequently that French captures far more readily the ancient, almost elemental, aura of a sport that can trace its origins, in some sense, back to the day two human beings first squared up to each other over an argument.

It also, of course, entered the Olympic narrative in a very early chapter, with wrestlers such as Milo of Croton still acknowledged as great Olympians 25 centuries after the exploits that first turned them into living legends.


This is why – while the sport very much needed the forearm smash that the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s Executive Board unexpectedly administered in Lausanne last month – I really don't see how the Olympic Movement can actually take the next step and banish wrestling to the margins if its frequent solemn invocations of its ancient heritage are to retain credibility.

This is potentially rotten luck for squash and karate, probably the best placed of the seven sports that now find themselves competing head on with wrestling for a single space in the 2020 Summer Olympic programme.

It is, of course, no bad thing that getting accepted into the Olympic Games is a big ask.

This is, after all, the pinnacle of world sport we are talking about.

But I can't be the only one who finds it faintly ridiculous that sports should have to compete directly against each other to secure their induction.

It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man, or the IOC, to devise a system capable of evaluating candidate sports objectively and in isolation.

They would then be welcomed onto the big stage once they had achieved sufficiently impressive ratings in the criteria for which they were being judged.

The risk with assessing sports individually, rather than in direct, well, "lutte" with their peers, is that the size of the Games might increase in a somewhat unpredictable way.


Controlling this has been a preoccupation in recent years, for perfectly honourable and understandable reasons: a Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games is already beyond the capacity of all but the top cities of the world to pull off.

Then again, the Summer Games are so big anyway, that it is hard to see how an extra two or three sports – if they truly merited the slots – would make all that much difference to the organisers.

In fact, the unsatisfactory current situation could be finessed quite straightforwardly by adopting a change I have floated before.

The Summer Games are arguably too big; but the Winter Games aren't.

What is more, countries with little snow and ice really aren't all that interested in strangers hurtling down a white mountainside with planks of wood strapped to their feet.

The argument for transferring some sports from the Summer Games to the Winter just gets stronger and stronger, in my view.

Switching orthodox indoor volleyball, for instance, would give countries like Brazil and Cuba an instant stake in the Winter Games, while allowing the sport to retain a Summer presence in the form of beach volleyball.


This would be comparable to the position of field hockey and ice hockey today.

Handball, to give another example, is an archetypal European winter sport; ditto indoor track cycling.

Moving both to the Winter Olympics to me makes perfect sense.

Such proposals, inevitably, would stir up a political hornets' nest.

A less controversial (but to me less satisfactory) alternative would be to declare the Summer Games closed to new sports, unless and until existing sports fell short of required standards, while offering to add the most deserving new sports to the Winter Olympic schedule.

I don't see why squash or karate should not be played at a Winter Games and I think the presence of both could benefit the Movement by expanding the event's geographical footprint.

You might disagree with such suggestions, but I hope you would concur that this is exactly the sort of idea that should get debated in campaigning for the forthcoming IOC Presidential election for the right to succeed Jacques Rogge, who is reaching the end of his 12-year stint in the top job.

Given the opportunity, I personally would be strongly tempted to vote for a candidate proposing a re-balancing of sporting programmes along these lines.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.