Japan proposing to add team contests to judo for the 2020 Olympics

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001214728

Whether it will be successful bid is very much the question. "Team contests" in judo aren't really team contests, but a series of successive individual contests by members of the same country.

I don't have any experience with judo team contests, but in kendo they are very common and also run as a series of individual contests. However because of the way it is scored (# of wins first, if tied on wins total points, if tied on points then sudden death between designated reps, not necessarily captains) it can be very exciting. There is team strategy in the ordering of the players and also in how the players approach each match based on what has happened before and what is likely to happen after. There is momentum for one team or the other as things continue. At worlds for kendo, team is the most important competition, the best players for each country do not necessarily even play individuals.

How is the judo team match organized when you have to deal with varying weight classes? One member in each class? That would take out a lot of the strategy that makes kendo team matches interesting.

Neil G wrote:
How is the judo team match organized when you have to deal with varying weight classes?  One member in each class?  

Yes. Judo team contests were very popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, partly because judo still represented an important demonstration sport, which introduced people to something they had never seen. By the half of the 1980s, judo contests had lost most of their glamour partly due to many clubs being able to fill each weight class with a fighter. By the second milenium the subject of judo contests had been poisoned and destroyed partly due to increasing commercialization at a national level given in by the IJF's commercialization of judo. For many purist judo team contests because tainted because clubs sometimes were able to 'loan' players from elsehwere, even foreign countries, like what is seen in commercial team sports like soccer and basketball. In judo, the term 'team' traditionally refers to a club where all people have been former, a kind of judo family, which is anathema to the replicat teams we see in more recent times. About the only places where judo team competitions have survived in their true spirit is Japan, where there are still school and university team contests, and the judo there is a lot more attractive than current modern style IJF judo. Until recently, most of the contests in Japan still used normal color tatami and white gi, which also made the whole ordeal must more attractive than the stupid yellow/blue tatami and blue gi, but I believe even the university contests in Japan now are using yellow/green tatami too, a mistake, but understandable considering that most of the national team's judoka come from some strong judo university. I think that kendô overall has been better able to preserve the original atmosphere in team contests than judo.

Cichorei Kano wrote:
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001214728

Whether it will be successful bid is very much the question. "Team contests" in judo aren't really team contests, but a series of successive individual contests by members of the same country.

I tend to agree. Yes, there are tactics to matching up competitors, but essentially it is a team of individuals against a team of individuals.

I have fought, reffed, managed and directed team events. They are a major logistical consideration, taking up much of the programme and adding days that often do not need to be added to an event. Strong countries love them because they get to bring home more medals and weaker countries that do not have a weight spread of competitors dislike them. Also, they are often billed as the 'main event' and held first. Competitors get injured and worn out, and jeopardise their individual chances of glory. On balance, I do not prefer the addition of teams events.

At one World (Ju-jitsu) Games event I attended, the Welsh team arrived with just three players. They entered the teams event as a bit of a lark and lost the first match when, if the competitor had been really focussed, he would have won. The next two Welsh boys won, meaning that if the first guy had gone well, they would have won the teams event 3-2. The opposition, from memory, was USA - highly favoured to win - and the upset would have been priceless!!!!

DougNZ wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001214728

Whether it will be successful bid is very much the question. "Team contests" in judo aren't really team contests, but a series of successive individual contests by members of the same country.

I tend to agree.  Yes, there are tactics to matching up competitors, but essentially it is a team of individuals against a team of individuals.

I have fought, reffed, managed and directed team events.  They are a major logistical consideration, taking up much of the programme and adding days that often do not need to be added to an event.  Strong countries love them because they get to bring home more medals and weaker countries that do not have a weight spread of competitors dislike them.  Also, they are often billed as the 'main event' and held first.  Competitors get injured and worn out, and jeopardise their individual chances of glory.  On balance, I do not prefer the addition of teams events.

At one World (Ju-jitsu) Games event I attended, the Welsh team arrived with just three players.  They entered the teams event as a bit of a lark and lost the first match when, if the competitor had been really focussed, he would have won.  The next two Welsh boys won, meaning that if the first guy had gone well, they would have won the teams event 3-2.  The opposition, from memory, was USA - highly favoured to win - and the upset would have been priceless!!!!

Yes ... moreover Japan's proposition is probably not so innocent as it may seem. Who insisted on weight classes in judo before the 1964 Olympics ? Japan, who before had advocated no weight classes as long as they were winning. But when Geesink started to win the open, weight classes was the only way they could still secure a gold medal.

Today after the disappearance of the Sovjet Unions with all the Eastern European countries and the stupid IJF rules, Japan since quite some time is not the absolute world dominating country anymore and a repetition of London 2012 for the male team does not look very exciting. So now we have this meek proposal for team contests in the Olympics, probably not without reason. When it comes to having strong players in all catgories the dominating countries are seriously reduced and Japan emains strong contender, next to France and few Eastern European countries. As my dad use to say, smoke does not necessarily mean fire; it can also be horse shit.

Team comps are fun, I've only known them as open weight, sucks to be the little guy on the team

Interesting. Will the teams be made up of those who have fought in the individuals (subject to qualification) or will they be made up differently?

Jonesey will remember the county team champs in Wales. Some of the most fun and hardest fights I ever had.
They were fantastic. To this day I still think that when the WJA stopped this particular annual event, judo in Wales went into decline.
It was the most supported contest in Wales at the time. More so then the national championships.
Great fun, great rivalry and great judo.

I agree that judo team competitions can be great fun for the participants. Somehow I fear though that such will hardly be a criterion to convince the IOC to add another discipline-category to its plethora or Olympic events.

Jonesy wrote:Interesting. Will the teams be made up of those who have fought in the individuals (subject to qualification) or will they be made up differently?

If you think about it, this is not possible for several reasons. As an individual you need to be sufficiently highly ranked in order to participate in the judo Olympics now. The main reason that many countries have judoka in only a few categories is because the rest of their jûdôka fail to rank high enough. Hence, if your suggestion would apply, it would mean that virtually no country could present a full team, not because they didn't have the jûdôka, but because they didn't have enough sufficient jûdôka who were ranked high enough.

Furthermore, if your suggestion would apply it would more or less defeat the purpose of holding a contest since one could then simply mathematically add the results of all jûdôka of the same country in the individual contests and see which country's team would score the highest ...

Naturally, countries will have a preference for picking candidates among those who participated individually for the simple reason that these will generally also be their highest ranked and thus supposedly their best athletes, but their can't be any obligation to do so and the absence of such obligation is welcome particularly in those cases where the jûdôka who participated in the individual contests got injured.

tafftaz wrote:Jonesey will remember the county team champs in Wales. Some of the most fun and hardest fights I ever had.
They were fantastic. To this day I still think that when the WJA stopped this particular annual event, judo in Wales went into decline.
It was the most supported contest in Wales at the time. More so then the national championships.
Great fun, great rivalry and great judo.

I fought in several for the county formally known as "Dyfed". There was me, Fred Price and Daniel Davies, covering -78, -86 and -95 not always in that order. They were great events.

I also fought in the team events at the University Championships 10 v 10 - open weight. Awesome times. I also fought in the West of England Teams Many Times - The Bob Taylor Trophy - on multiple occasions when I lived in Bath.

Jonesy wrote:

tafftaz wrote:Jonesey will remember the county team champs in Wales. Some of the most fun and hardest fights I ever had.
They were fantastic. To this day I still think that when the WJA stopped this particular annual event, judo in Wales went into decline.
It was the most supported contest in Wales at the time. More so then the national championships.
Great fun, great rivalry and great judo.

I fought in several for the county formally known as "Dyfed". There was me, Fred Price and Daniel Davies, covering -78, -86 and -95 not always in that order. They were great events.

I also fought in the team events at the University Championships 10 v 10 - open weight. Awesome times. I also fought in the  West of England Teams Many Times - The Bob Taylor Trophy - on multiple occasions when I lived in Bath.

records say that dyfdd was the hardest in all the kingdom

My main training partner is named Dafydd (Thomas). One of the toughest judoka to come out of Wales. He competed internationally for the Welsh and British squad along with Jonesy. Still going strong. He took some stick when the little Britain character came along.
By the way Jonesy I am currently teaching judo to Fred Price's daughters. They are great kids and they both have talent. Fred made a brief comeback about a year ago but he had forgotten how tough training was and "retired"again. Good guy.

By the way ricebale Dyfed was a region of Wales, not a name.