If the Olympic Games are a history of mankind, wrestling is the prologue(序言). When the ancient Games of the Olympiad were born, wrestling already was an ancient game. Widely recognized as the world’s oldest competitive sport, wrestling appeared in a series of Egyptian wall paintings as early as 5,000 years ago. When the Games began in 776 BC, more than two thousand years later, it included wrestling .and, in the years that followed, wrestling featured as the main event.
The sport would return in a similar role when the Olympic Games returned after a 1500-year absence in 1896. Organizers, seeking direct links to ancient times, found a natural in the sport that had enjoyed popularity across much of the ancient world, from Greece, Assyria and Babylon to India, China and Japan. They brought Greco-Roman wresting back to life, a style they believed to be exact carryover(遗留物) from the Greek and Roman wrestlers of old.
In Greco-Roman wrestling, the wrestlers used only their arms and upper bodies to attack, They could hold only those same parts of their opponents(对手). It worked nicely from a historical opinion, but another style was sweeping across Great Britain and the United States by then, Known as “catch as catch can”, it had become popular professional entertainment at festivals in both countries.
In 1904 the Olympic Games added the second wrestling event and called it”freestyle”. Now,wrestlers could use their legs for pushing, lifting and tripping(绊),and they could hold opponents above or below the waist.