One of the most traditional Olympic sports, wrestling had a brush with oblivion in February 2013 when it was dropped from the Olympic programme for the Tokyo 2020 Games. Sevens months later it was reinstated after introducing a raft of changes to make it easier to understand and more appealing to young audiences, as well as increasing the participation of women.

Rejuvenated, the sport arrives in Rio this weekend – in the form of women’s freestyle wrestling – for the Olympic test event. Fifty competitors from eight countries will take part in the event at Carioca Arena 1 on Saturday and Sunday (30-31 Janaury). During the Olympic Games both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling will be staged in the neighbouring Carioca Arena 2, which is being used for training during the test event.

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Carioca Arena 1 is ready to host the freestyle wrestling test event this weekend (Photo: Rio 2016/Alex Ferro)

In order to re-establish its place in the Olympic programme, United World Wrestling updated its rules to guarantee more aggression and dynamism during competition. The main change was to time, which has gone from three rounds of two minutes to two of three minutes with cumulative scoring – meaning the fighters have more time to inflict a winning hold or throw on their opponent.

Increasing the number of women was another critical issue. To meet this demand, new categories were included in the women’s freestyle event – 53kg, 58kg, 69kg and 75kg replaced 55kg and 72kg – and all will appear in the test event.

Russia’s Olympic champion Natalia Vorobieva is one of the stars at the test event (Photo: Getty Images/Quinn Rooney)

The event brings some of the biggest names in the sport to Rio six months before the Olympic competition. Among them is Russian Natalia Vorobieva, world champion in the 69kg category and gold medallist at London 2012 in the now non-existent 72kg category, and American Adeline Gray, a two-time world champion and gold medallist at the 2015 Pan-American Games. Both have already qualified for Rio 2016.

Among the home athletes, the standout wrestler is Aline Ferreira, known for being the first Brazilian to win a medal at a world championship (silver in Uzbekistan in 2014). Focused on Rio 2016, Aline wants to use the test event to size up her rivals.

“I will get a feel for competing against top-level opponents at home and be able to study them and think about my strategy”

Aline Ferreira

The wrestlers have been training in Carioca Arena 2, which will host the Olympic tournament (Photo: Rio 2016/Alex Ferro)

This will be the third test event in January at the recently opened Carioca Arena 1 – the venue has already staged basketball and powerlifting. For freestyle wrestling, besides venue management, the main operational tests conducted by Rio 2016 concern the competition area and the results systems.

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“The sport is bringing its new concepts to Rio 2016. The competition is quicker, so it’s vital to test all aspects of venue management. We’ll also have 66 volunteers at the test event to guarantee that they will be prepared during the Games,” said Gilles Toloni, Rio 2016’s competition manager for freestyle wrestling.