1912 Olympic Games Official Report Part 2

various schemes, one was at length agreed on which proved to satisfyall the requirements that could be demanded. These rules were printed,ready for distribution, several months before the Games began.THE QUESTION OF OFFICIALS.The choice of officials was another thing to which the Committeepaid the greatest attention. In almost every other branch of athletics,the judge, or referee, has merely to state an actual result, although,on one or two occasions, as for example in the case of a dead heatin a race, this may be a matter of some little difficulty. With regardto wrestling, however, things are quite different. The situation herevaries incessantly, and an attention, a watchfulness, is demanded, whichputs the judge to a most severe test. By means of exercising thegreatest care in its choice, however, the Committee succeeded in obtainingthe services, as officials, of persons who, for many years haddevoted much time to wrestling as a branch of athletics.THE NUMBER OF ENTRIES.After the close of entries on the 6 June, when it became knownthat no fewer than 267 representatives had been entered by the variousnations, some serious doubts began to be entertained whetherthe competitions could be concluded within the time allotted to them,and steps were at once taken to meet this eventuality. For example,an agreement was made with the owners of the Riding School in theneighbourhood of the Stadium, by which this establishment could, ifnecessary, be used for the purposes of the competitions. As, however,only 171 of the 267 competitors were present on the day when thewrestling began, not much use was made of this arrangement.The entries in the different classes and the numbers that actuallycompeted were as follows:Feather WeightandLight WeightMiddle Weight, AMiddle Weight, BHeavy WeightTHE COMPETITIONS.The competitions, which went on simultaneously on 3 wrestling-matswere, as far as possible, so arranged that, on each day, two classeswere free from wrestling, in order to give the competitors an opportunityof resting for at least one day between the events.This arrangement proved to be an excellent one, for, with such alarge number of competitors, and with the principle in force thattwo defeats excluded, it was necessary for a wrestler to appear in quitea number of rounds in order to reach the final.It would, of course, take too much space to give an account of allthe wrestling that took place, the total number of bouts reaching therespectable number of 303; we shall, therefore restrict ourselves tomentioning only some few names.752