Wrestling at the 1924 Summer Olympics

The Paris Olympics added three new events to the wrestling tournament. In the Greco-Roman style, a bantamweight division was added, and some of the other weight limits were shuffled. Two new events were added to the freestyle competition, bantamweight and welterweight. This moved the heavyweight class limit up to 87 kilogrammes. For the Greco-Roman events, the tournament format was also changed\: each wrestler remained in competition until he had lost two matches. Final order was decided based on the number of matches won. The freestyle events were conducted as single-elimination competition, with the Bergvall system used to determine the secondary medals. All those losing to the champion competed in the second-place tournament, and all those losing to the gold or silver medalist competed in a single-elimination third-place tournament. The match length was also slightly changed from 1920: the fights were limited to 20 minutes, with ties going into overtime, a 6-minute ground wrestling decider.

The competitions saw a continued dominance of the Nordic nations in Greco-Roman wrestling, while the freestyle events were dominated by Switzerland and the United States. New in the Olympic wrestling arena was Japan, which was to become a dominant power in the sport several decades later. Through Katsutoshi Naito, the Asian nation won its first wrestling medal. Wrestling was one of the sports conducted at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a single mat being located in the centre field of the cycling track. The crowds were never big, with only a few hundred paying spectators attending each day.