#WomensDay2022

Gender Equality, WW Development UWW's Focus Through '24 Paris Games

Monday, March 7, 2022 - 19:01 By United World Wrestling Press

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CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland (March 8) -- United World Wrestling continues to make significant efforts to lift the standard of women's wrestling around the world -- not only on the mat, but off the mat as well.

One of the biggest testimonies to those efforts was UWW Bureau member ZHANG Xia being awarded the International Olympic Committee's Women in Sport Award as she strives to provide more opportunities to lift women wrestlers and referees.

A part of UWW's five-year strategic plan, women's wrestling is one of the main aspects with an aim to achieve gender equality. The UWW Gender Equality Development Programme represents recognition, encouragement, and empowerment for the individuals and the National Federations of UWW.

Each year, the program is awarded a project or organization that contributes to the development and is committed to tackling gender biases and inequalities in wrestling, in such areas as participation of girls in wrestling, elite-level women’s wrestling development, a coaching program for women [WSLA] and development of women referees and women in leadership.

Another high-level highlighting women in the sport was the '21-'22 The Women Lead Sport Programme, which featured  40 participants -- 95% women – from five different continents.

The objectives of the Women Lead Sports Master Program were to empower participants to shape the future of wrestling as a global sport, increase a diverse talent pool in leadership within UWW at all levels, and to learn effective leadership strategies, techniques, and applicable tactics that work today.

Women Lead Sports Master Program Topics:
- Personal Power and Influence
- Stakeholder management and use of skills navigating politics
- Self-awareness of personal leadership style, areas of development and strengths
- Communication and Persuasion skills
- Negotiation skills
- Networking, sponsoring, mentoring, and lobbying skills
- Self-confidence, courage and assertiveness
- Sport Electoral year and best practices
- Leading in male-dominated environments with success and authenticity.

UWW also renewed the Women in Sport Leadership Programme for five female coaches in collaboration with OS 2022-2024. Like for Tokyo Games, UWW has come up with a dedicated program for the promotion of women referees up to Paris Olympics 2024 with the first major event being the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham, England.

UWW also had two recipients of the World Academy of Sports Post Graduate program from Gambia and Australia.

Technical Assistance

In 2021, despite the barriers and challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, UWW continued to support the National Federations in various forms especially to increase more participation of women in wrestling.

One of the biggest courses held was in Saudi Arabia, which hosted the UWW Women’s Coaching Course. Women from different provinces of Saudi Arabia participated in the UWW Technical Course for Coaches – Introduction to Coaching and Safety from December 5-9, 2021 in the Green Hall, Ministry of Sport, Riyadh. This course was organized by the Saudi Arabian Wrestling Federation and supported by the Leaders Development Institute.

UWW has continued to put focus on gender equality and as a result, the 2021 Women Lead Sports Master Programme was organized. It is a biannual program that promotes gender equality and empowers women in wrestling has been organized. 

Due to the pandemic, the program was carried out virtually over two sessions on November 29 and December 6 with Q&A and Graduation/Certificates sessions in January 2022. With the 2024 Paris Games in mind, the program continues to be held every two years since 2017.

Regarding the technical assistance of wrestlers and coaches, UWW assisted a total of 79 athletes and 39 coaches from 44 countries on the five continents in participating in the Tokyo Olympic Qualifiers.

Women wrestlers constituted 18 percent of the total beneficiaries and one of the wrestlers -- Bolortuya BAT OCHIR (MGL) -- qualified for the Tokyo Games and even won a bronze medal.

For World Championships in Oslo in 2021 and 54 athletes and 25 coaches were approved for support and women wrestlers achieved the most noticeable results. Among all the teams that benefited from Technical Assistance, the following athletes finished in the top five. 

Samar HAMZA (EGY) -- 76kg bronze
MELENDRES Luisa VALVERDE (ECU) -- 53kg 5th
Lais NUNES DE OLIVEIRA (BRA) -- 62kg 5th

A 50 percent membership for women was achieved in the Athletes Commission. The election for the commission for the term 2021-2025 was held in Oslo during the World Championships. While two seats were pre-empted for women wrestlers, three were selected to the seven-member committee.

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Wiebe inspires next gen at UWW-IIS camp in India

Saturday, February 15, 2025 - 08:21 By Vinay Siwach

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KARNATAKA, India (February 15) -- Erica WIEBE (CAN), the 2016 Rio Olympic champion, usually doesn't take it around but for her India trip, she made sure to pack her gold medal from Rio.

Call it luck, the gold medal turned out to be the highlight of her trip.

In India for a masterclass at the international women's wrestling camp organized by the Inspire Institute of Sport and United World Wrestling, Wiebe got mobbed by 50 young wrestlers as she showed them her medal. Wrestlers from Jordan, Estonia, South Africa, Mauritius, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and hosts India, all part of the camp, wanted to touch it, feel it and may be keep it.

"To see the looks on their faces and in their bodies responding to what it felt like to hold the kind of weight of your dream in your hand, I got emotional with them," Wiebe says. "It was so surreal for me to share the medal with the athletes because it brought me back to where I was at that time, and how it felt like winning an Olympic gold medal was just like this impossible dream that would never happen. It's really important for me to come here and do things like this to remind these women that, these crazy, unimaginable things are real. They can happen and to encourage them to continue to dream big."

No wrestler could walk away without a photo. A few even got emotional as they took the medal in their hands.

"God, I don't know how many times I have dreamt about that in the night," U17 world bronze medalist Lisette BOTTKER (EST) says. "When I got the medal on my hands, I was also trying not to cry but the feeling is awesome."

Maya QUTAISHAT (JOR) adds, "It seemed like the dreams of most of us wrestlers in front of us. Like getting the Olympic gold medal."

UWW and IIS organized the camp for wrestlers from around the world from January 15 to 31. It was hosted by IIS at it's world class facility in Vijayanagar, a township in Ballari district of north Karnataka, India.

Wiebe held a masterclass for the wrestlers along with training sessions with IIS head coach Amir TAVOKKALIAN, a former world silver medalist and Asian champion.

"It's a really amazing development opportunity for a young wrestlers from all around the world," Wiebe said. "There's several nations here, and it's so incredible to see the level of talent and passion of these young athletes. At the camp this week, we've had a number of sessions kind of leveraging different unique styles, having the different countries lead different warmups. We're here at the Inspire Institute of Sport which is a phenomenal world class facility. We don't have anything like this in Canada, there's very few facilities like this in the world. It's really exciting to see that India has this.

"Not only that, they have this for their athletes training, but they've invited many countries around the world to share in this moment and to leverage the resources that are available here on this site."

IIS President Manisha MALHOTRA also visited the camp and threw some light on the partnership with UWW to grow the sport.

"We're very passionate about the sport from an Indian ecosystem point of view," Malhotra said. "But what we realized is that, we need to start looking outside India to bring in expertise, look in partnerships. With that in mind, I think there was no better partner than UWW.

"They’ve done a phenomenal job with wrestling worldwide and growing the sport very well. The idea was to have a very good mix of people, whether they are from a very developed wrestling nation or from an underdeveloped wrestling nation, it needs to be a common platform where people can extract some sort of benefit for everybody. That was the main premise with what we worked with."

Apart from the training, wrestlers at the camp used the high performance center at IIS and indulged in sightseeing.

"Training here is very strong. We come out of the mat sweating a lot, and it's very tough," Qutaishat said, "The girls here are very high level. When I wrestle them, I learn a lot of techniques and so many things that I usually don't see back in my country. But I get to explore more as I go out to the camps."

Wiebe had an advice for all wrestlers, especially coming from smaller countries to the development camps.

"I told the athletes the goals are: to have fun, and to get better," Wiebe said. "And how do you do that? You find strength on the edge of failure. You have to put yourself on the line. Wrestling is not easy. You see it on the athletes bodies. They're pushing themselves to their limits, physically and mentally. They are tired. I remember being that way as an athlete. You always have to find another level to yourself."