olympics 1968

What was the reason of no judo at the olympics of 1968?

Judo did not become an official Olympic sport until after the 1968 games in Mexico City. Judo was only a demonstration sport at Tokyo in 1964, and it did not garner enough support to achieve official status until after a few more world championships showed how it was truly an international sport. Olympic rules permit the host nation to introduce new sports in the manner judo was introduced.

Here is a serie of 24 articles about the history of judo: http://www.nwjv.de/fileadmin/qualifizierung/dokumente/kodokan_judo.pdf

The last one is about the introduction of judo in the olympic program.

For those who can not read (the excellent) german (paper by wdax) -

here is a long version in english by Andreas Niehaus


Olympism: The Global Vision: From Nationalism to Internationalism

page 86 ff

"If you want to cry, cry on the green mats of Kodokan"

Expressions of japanese cultural and national identity in the movement to include Judo into the olympic programm


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hironed wrote:Judo did not become an official Olympic sport until after the 1968 games in Mexico City. Judo was only a demonstration sport at Tokyo in 1964, and it did not garner enough support to achieve official status until after a few more world championships showed how it was truly an international sport. Olympic rules permit the host nation to introduce new sports in the manner judo was introduced.

This is commonly passed on, but incorrect. Judo was introduced to the 1964 olympics as an "optional" sport, not a demonstration sport. Sports are classified as core individual sports, core team sports, or optional sports. The local host is required to accommodate the core sports, but can choose (or not) to include the optional sports. (Note: with the recent uproar regarding wrestling, it was reclassified from core to optional, so it wasn't pulled from the olympics entirely, like some people are saying (no less stupid not including it, right?) but each host can vote to include (or not) the original olympic sport). The host can then also choose to include demonstration sports, which can actually be simply demonstrations, or can be actual events of their own (the medal count not being included in the medal totals).

You can download/read the official reports here: http://www.olympic.org/tokyo-1964-summer-olympics

For what it's worth, the actual demonstration sports in 1964 were Budo (Kendo, Kyudo and Sumo) and Baseball.

(I was curious and looked at the 1988 report from Seoul as well, and Women's Judo was listed as a demonstration event)