Skip to main content

Zabgreb GP Day 1 - Israel's strong showing, American Hardware, IJF's improved experience

By
3 Mats, 3 Israelis competing
I captured an interesting moment earlier today during the Zagreb Grand Prix. As I watching the matches streamed on YouTube, There were 3 Israeli women competing simultaneously - poor Shani Hershko (the Israeli women's national coach). The commentators on the broadcast also spoke a bit about the rise of the Israeli Judo team of late, especially the Women. Unfortunately, the Israeli Women's team today didn't perform as well as we would hope - they finished just off of the medal round with two 7th place finishes, and a 5th (with a further two women being knocked out early). The men's team finished a bit better with Tal Flicker and Baruch Shmailov taking Gold and Bronze, respectively, in the Men's -66kg.

Overall, Israel has been progressively improving it's Judo, and unlike in the past where they may have had one or two competitors who had a chance at World or Olympic hardware (think Oren Smada, Yael Arad, Arik Ze'evi), they now have a handful of people who have a shot at a medal. Currently 6 Israelis rank in the top 10 of the world ranking and another 6 in the top 20 in their respective weight classes. Although the team suffered a loss when Yarden Gerbi retired, there are many more young women coming up through the ranks, eager to hear Hatikva from the podium.

In other Zagreb news, two Americans hit the podium - Angelica Delgado took home a bronze medal and Adonis Diaz took home the silver.

Finally, since I haven't posted about international competition in a while, I thought I'd take the opportunity to say how Much I am liking the new IJF Web/Video experience. Not only can you chose the mat to watch, but you can also see upcoming matches and the bracket as well. While the timing feature for matches isn't perfect (the occasional Ippon 10 seconds in throws it off), it's still pretty good. I also like that they link video of each match to the results, so I can search for a player and watch each of their individual fights. It makes following these international GP/GS tourneys a lot easier.

I also like the commentating. I don't know who's reading this blog, but if you work for the IJF, and can hook me up as a commentator - feel free to reach out :)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye 2018, Hello 2019

By
Well folks, this has been a crazy year in Judo. A year that saw siblings win gold medals at a world tour event. A year that saw returning favorites and rising upstarts and dozens of awesome ippons.

 It was a year of peace and friendship in Judo - If I told you 12 months ago that we'd see the Israeli flag hoisted in Abu Dhabi while their national anthem played in the backgroumd, or that a unified Korean team would compete at the World Championships in Baku - you would've thought highly unlikely that either one of those would come true, yet alone both.

It was also a great Judo year for me personally. After a few years of spotty practice due to various life events, I've finally got back to practicing regularly. I've also got back to blogging regularly (well, semi-regularly). I am always amazed that people are reading my blog, and I just want you to know that I appreciate it.

Happy Holidays and Best wishes for a great 2019.

For your viewing pleasure - below is a video the …
Post a Comment
Read more

The one thing Putin Taught me about Judo... (kind of)

By
In the early days of this blog, I did some book reviews, including a review of a book written by the current Russian Premier - Vladimir Putin and co-authors Vasiliy Shestakov and Alexei Levitsky (you can read the review here). Although the book is out of print, you can find it on google books - here.

One of the things I really like about the book, is what he refers to as the 'Technical-Tactical Set' (you can see an example for Tai Otoshi on pp. 80-81). For each technique, he shows how to set it up as a sequence both to and from other throws. For example: turn your blocked Tai Otoshi into a Seoinage.

Granted, it's not earth shattering, but when I first saw it, it enabled me, (generally a visual learner) better understand how to follow-up one technique with another and, more importantly, that attacks aren't one off - there's no one swing of the bat, or taking a shot and waiting for a rebound - the attacks are continuous, and need to come in rapid succession.

On many …
Post a Comment
Read more