International Olympic Committee's (IOC) decision to remove wrestling from the Games program is surprising, president of the Russian Olympic Committee said Wednesday, vowing to appeal for a reversed decision.

"It is hard to imagine the Olympic Games without wrestling," Alexander Zhukov said in a statement on the official website of the Russian Olympic Committee.

"However much I would respect baseball, wushsu and other sports claiming to be included into the Olympic program, they could not be compared with wrestling," Zhukov said, adding that it would be unfair to deprive thousands of Russian junior wrestlers of a dream to win in Olympics.

He vowed to make his best to persuade the IOC not to exclude wrestling from the Summer Olympics-2020. "For us it was highly unexpected, but I hope very much that at the IOC session we'll do our best to persuade the IOC members to keep wrestling intact."

The IOC Executive Committee will discuss this May in St. Petersburg the future of wrestling as an Olympic sport along with seven other sports, namely baseball, karate, roller skating, sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding and wushu, also known as kung fu.

The final decision will be made by the 125th session of the IOC in September in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires. Endi

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