Cheered on by a raucous crowd waving flags and chanting, a team of Iranian wrestlers defeated the United States 6-1 in an exhibition match staged in New York’s Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday.
As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported on Tuesday, when American, Iranian and Russian wrestlers visited the United Nations, the match was part of a unified effort by sporting officials from the three nations to save wrestling as an Olympic sport. The International Olympic Committee suggested in February that wrestlers might not be invited to compete in the 2020 Olympic Games.
Wrestling officials, diplomats and reporters â€" including Arash Azizzada and Negar Mortazavi of Voice of America’s Persian News Network and Bahman Kalbasi, the U.N. correspondent of BBC Persian â€" posted video, photographs and text updates on the action as the match unfolded.
Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.
