Canadian wrestlers Daniel Igali, Carol Huynh trying to help keep their sport in the Olympics

Wrestling is not being eliminated from the 2020 Olympics, at least not without a fight.

On Wednesday the International Olympic Committee executive board announced that wrestling, along with squash and baseball/softball, has been put on a short list of sports to be considered for the 2020 Summer Games while karate, inline speed skating, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu were eliminated from contention.

The final decision of which one of the three sports will be a part of Olympic competition in 2020 will come in September at a meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"It was never going to be an easy decision but I feel my colleagues on the [IOC executive] board made a good decision in selecting baseball/softball, squash and wrestling to be put forward in Buenos Aires," IOC president Jacques Rogge said in a statement.

The news of the three shortlisted sports comes nearly three months after the IOC surprisingly announced that wrestling would be eliminated from the Olympic program.

Canadian wrestlers Carol Huynh, who won gold in Beijing and bronze in London, and Daniel Igali, who won gold in Sydney, have taken on key roles in helping push for wrestling’s inclusion in the 2020 Games and beyond. Huynh was named chair of Wrestling Canada back in March, and both she and Igali were on hand in St. Petersburg, Russia this week as a part of a six-member team that made a pitch to the IOC executive board to keep the sport in the Olympic program.

As far as Summer Olympic sports go, wrestling has been one where Canada has found consistent success. As a country they’ve won 14 medals since 1908 and at least one in each of the last seven Summer Games dating back to Los Angeles 1984. So it’s with good reason that athletes like Huynh and Igali have stepped up to take on the IOC as it not only means everything to their sport to be included in the Olympics, but it’s important for Canada’s future at the Summer Games.

“We are happy and extremely relieved that the IOC executive board has voted to keep wrestling for the final vote in Buenos Aires in Argentina. We as a community have worked extremely hard in the last four months to be where we are today," Don Ryan, president of Wrestling Canada, said in a statement. “We have not won the battle yet, we must continue as a community to persevere in our efforts.

“To put it in terms of wrestling — we’ve won the first round,” Ryan said. “We must now win the second round to claim victory, and that won’t be so easy. The race will be tight and everyone will show up ready to fight.”