So wrestling, flipped over onto its back and placed in a stranglehold by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) three months ago, has - officially - twisted free and now stands panting and ready to resume its battle for survival at the Games.

"The match is not finished," said Nenad Lalovic, the recently elected president of the international wrestling federation, FILA, after the IOC Executive Board's announcement in St Petersburg that the sport which had been earmarked to drop out of the schedule after the 2016 Rio Games had wriggled its way back into contention along with two others hoping to join the party in 2020, squash and the combined baseball/softball option.

Next, these three will go forward from St Petersburg to Buenos Aires, where the full IOC Assembly will decide on September 8 which will take the single available place at the Games in seven years' time.

Wrestling at this year's Youth Olympic Festival in Australia

"We have a second match to fight," Lalovic added. "But be careful, we are good fighters."

Wrestling's fight has certainly been backed by big battalions. When it was provisionally dropped from the core IOC sports in February, there was a mighty reaction of dismay and disapprobation from the unlikely trinity of the United States, Russia and Iran – all countries which hold wrestling, and its history of having been a key part of both the ancient and modern Olympics, dear.

No one will have been more glad to hear of the St Petersburg result than Donald Rumsfeld, the 80-year-old former US Defence Secretary who wrestled in his youth for Princeton University and the US Navy, and made an unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 1956 Olympics.

When wrestling was voted the Olympics' Least Promising in February, the man who offered the world the unarguable opinion in 2002 that "there are known knowns" mounted a strong and closely argued defence of its position as one of the sacred sports of the Games.

Pointing out that wrestling had been involved in the first recorded Olympics of 776BC, and that it had missed only one of the modern Olympics - in 1900 - Rumsfeld characterised the sport as "universal", requiring only "an opponent and a flat surface", and adding that more than 170 nations have competed in it. "It doesn't require a golf course, a swimming pool or a horse," he went on - again, unarguably. "To exclude wrestling from the Olympics would be a tragedy for the sport, for the athletes and for the proud tradition of the Games...it has thrived through war, depression, social changes and globalisation. But the Olympic committee panel didn't see fit to include it in the 2020 Games. Something is wrong with that picture."

As a former wrestler, former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a particular interest in defending the sport's Olympic status

The most cutting phrase in the former Defence Secretary's attack, however, was this: "Wrestling uniquely encapsulates the Olympic spirit, even though it harkens back to older and more martial virtues, rather than the arts festival and Kumbaya session that some may prefer the modern Games to be."

Rumsfeld has got himself rather tied up at this point, as arts festivals were an integral part of the ancient Games from the point when they started in 776BC, with sculptors and poets contributing to artistic competitions.

But it was the reference to "Kumbaya" which resonated most strongly. What did the combative former politician mean by this?

"Kumbaya" is a spiritual song from the 1930s, a standard campfire song which, indeed, I remember singing round a campfire as a Scout. It derives from Gullah, a creole language spoken by former slaves living on islands off South Carolina and Georgia, and the title of the song is a version of an appeal to "My Lord" to Come by Here.

Nowadays, however, the phrase Kumbaya is a shorthand used in a cynical way to denote a naively optimistic attitude or falsely moralising attitude - a fake unanimity.

An 18th century German print depicting wrestling taking place at the ancient Games in circa 600BC in front of a giant statue of Zeus

If Rumsfeld is implying that the IOC is some kind of a fake family, then it is a family in which he dearly wants wrestling to remain.

That said, the IOC spokesperson's comments at the time of the February "exclusion" have something of a falsely bright ring:

"We wanted to allow room for the renewal of the Olympic programme," they said. "This is not the end of the process, this is purely a recommendation. This is not about what's wrong with wrestling, but what is good for the Games."

Which prompts two questions.

The first: if the decision was not about what was wrong with wrestling, why has that sport felt moved to move on its old President, Raphaël Martinetti, within days of its announcement and pursued a major re-development of its competition structure to simplify it after conspicuous consultation with its athletes?

"Everybody understood what we have done," the new President announced in the relieved aftermath of the St Petersburg announcement. Indeed. They have got their act together after receiving an IOC bodyslam.

But the second question - is this actually good for the Games?

If, after Buenos Aires, it transpires that the net result of all this manoeuvring by eight international sports has been to give wrestling a boot up the backside before allowing it to doff its cap and re-enter the Olympic rings, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy and frustrated people.


The World Squash Federation President N Ramachandran, who led a presentation team which included world number one's Nicol David and Ramy Ashour, described the decision to shortlist his sport as "a huge milestone in our quest to join the Olympic Programme", and added: "I would like to thank the Executive Board for the faith it has placed in Squash."

But if squash should get the cold shoulder in September after a third consecutive campaign to join the Olympics, it is hard to believe all that cumulative hope and enthusiasm could remain intact. At some point, surely, the fixed grin which all those who knock on the IOC door are obliged to maintain will falter, to be replaced by an expression of dismay. Or even anger.

Sports, and cities, knock on that door for a variety of reasons. Many do not seriously expect to be allowed in, but calculate that their efforts will succeed in raising their profiles and reputations sufficiently to make the exercise worthwhile.

However, when the IOC asks sports, and cities, to make such enormous efforts, over and over again, only to find that rounds of secret voting maintain a barricade to their ambitions, then it treads a very fine line.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.