TOKYO - Judo is aiming for a return to its traditional Japanese roots at the world championships in Tokyo Thursday after purists felt the martial art was suffering from some fighters' use of wrestling moves.
The event, returning to Tokyo for the first time in half a century, has lured a record 848 competitors from 111 countries as the combat sport hopes to gain more global appeal.
While the sport has won a larger international following, over the years Japanese judokas have been bothered by Europeans who fought with low tackles and other wrestling-type moves and were determined not to let their opponents grab them by the collar or sleeve, the classical grip.
But the Tokyo world championships will become a test ground for a new International Judo Federation rule which respects Japan's traditional virtue of perfect technical execution for "ippon" victory.
The IJF in January banned a direct tackle to the legs before grappling.
"We're totally committed to adopt refereeing rules to maintain the principles of judo and maintain the purity of our sport," IJF chief refereeing director Juan Carlos Barcos said Wednesday.
He said the IJF wanted to show a "clear difference" between judo and other martial arts.
In a move to promote the sport, the IJF said it had for the first time in 35 years allowed two judokas, instead of one, from each country to take part in each weight category at the world championships.
"To develop judo, we can't hide the best athletes or keep them at home," IJF chief sports director Vladmir Barta told a news conference, adding that as in athletics, gymnastics and cycling, the quota of one competitor per one country "totally destroys the sport."
The championships have also become an annual affair after being held almost every other year until 2009.
In the men's categories, only two of the top 58 judokas in the world rankings are missing in Tokyo, Barta said.
IJF president Marius Vizer, who has led a series of reforms since taking office in 2007 after heading the European Judo Union, said his organisation had invited 40 less affluent countries with financial help to the Tokyo championships.
Asked if the bigger quota would further lessen the chances of smaller countries winning a medal, the Austrian said: "We have special programmes to help such countries but we cannot produce medals for them stopping judo's development."
Under Vizer, the IJF has created such high-profile judo competitions as Grand Slam and Grand Prix events as well as the Masters. It has also set up the points-ranking system which will determine Olympic berths.
All-Japan Judo Federation president Haruki Uemura welcomed back the world championships to Tokyo for the first time in 52 years as 2010 marks the 150th anniversary of judo founder Jigoro Kano's birth.
"We want all of you to appreciate the biggest ever championships in this memorable year," he said.
The Japanese men are aiming to come back from an unprecedented gold medal drought at last year's championships in Rotterdam where they only grabbed one silver medal and one bronze.
The women salvaged some of the country's pride in their homegrown sport by winning three golds and two bronzes.
The men's decline followed their all-time low haul of two medals, although both gold, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Japan has previously hosted the world judo championships four times with the first two editions in Tokyo in 1956 and 1958. In 2003, Osaka was the last Japanese host city.
I tend to think "tradition" in the context of the above is misplaced. Tradition is a totality. It is not to be recovered by merely resuscitating those aspects of Judo that work in a highlights package for a TV audience. Surely back to tradition would entail abolishing weight categories, more newazza, the reintroduction of leg-locks, etc...etc...
ReplyDeletePerhaps, what Judo is really looking for is a new format and style of coverage for the media landscape. What should be banned is trying to shoot Judo as if it were tennis or American football.