All about Judo competitions
Judo, as well as being a martial art and form of exercise is also a sport. It is both a Commonwealth and Olympic sport, with athletes competing from almost every country in the world. Like all sports, there are winners and losers and competitions for all levels. Competitions start from a young age and this is often a source of concern for parents.
Competition for children is a difficult subject, there are a wide range of opinions on the various merits and negatives about letting kids compete.
One school of thought is that children should not compete until quite late (teens). Another opinion is that the younger your child starts the better. To make things even more complex, some people think that kids should start young, but that the competitions should be geared towards being fun. Yet another view is that younger children should compete and care about winning, but that there should be events for all levels and lots of events, so that everyone has an opportunity to win medals, certificates, etc.
Now… for your child, you will need to make a decision based on your personal opinions and on your child’s abilities, temperament and desires.
In Judo, competitions are an important opportunity for a Judo player to test themselves (and what they have learned) against new people, different people and people who have learned different things from different instructors, coaches and training partners.
In Judo, competitions generally have 4 medalists. One Gold, One Silver and two bronze medals. The reason being that all those players who lose to the Gold and Silver medalists during the competition, go into a “repechage”. The repechage is used to decide the two Bronze medals.
The argument for using a repechage system is that if your child loses to the eventual gold medalist in their first fight, they would have no opportunity to progress further. So, they go into the repechage and get to compete against all the other players who lost to the Gold medalist. The other “side” of the repechage is those players who lost to the Silver medalist. So the two bronze medals go to the winners of each side of the repechage. It’s your “second chance” if you draw the eventual gold or silver medalists early in the event.
So there you have it, a basic introduction to competitions for Judo.
Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunny/50481562/