The only difference between judo matches at the Paralympics and other top judo events is the measures taken to mark the security zones.

The level of competition of blind and visually impaired judokas does not appear to be less as compared to sighted judokas.

The VI judoka will fight for the gold medal according to almost the same International Judo Federation rules.

VI Judo was introduced in the Paralympic program after the 1988 Seoul games. Four years later in the ’92 Barcelona games 53 athletes took part in a competition by 16 countries.

Women were only allowed at the world championships in Madrid in 1998. In this competition 24 countries took part, which together delegated 92 men and 25 women.

Simon Jackson (Sydney 2000)

Dutch VI History

That blind people are also good at judo is well known, but performing at a high level does not happen very often. They must have a certain feeling for this to occur. This is what Eibert Pieper (VI judoka Class B and 1st Dan) achieved. He trained at the regular sports school Van der Vlucht. He became 1st in the region M-N all categories and 2nd in district M-N, in his weight category, at sports school Helmont in Hilversum. He also competed in an international tournament for VI judo in Israel. There he also won a fist prize. With this he showed that in spite of  blindness one can excel at judo . He taught judo at the Bartimeus institution in Zeist as well.

 

Certain techniques can be learnt quite easily, but to apply them at the right moment is another matter. Which techniques are easily adopted? I once asked Jeroen Ploeger who is blind and took up judo when he was 25. Breaking a fall he found very impor-tant because he was quite often confronted with such situations.

 

Until the beginning of 2004 he did judo according to the G-rules. Since 2004, when the first VI judo training started, he does judo according to VI-rules. Unlike in G-judo everything is now permitted (so also arm locks, strangulations and sacrefies trows). At the one hand he had to get used to this, certainly at the beginning (after all strangling does hurt), at the other hand he sees it as  challenge. He finds that VI-judo is fiercer than G-judo, although at G-tournaments he encountered quite difficult opponents. Now he also started training with sighted judokas. There are no restrictions (within certain rules of course). One must decide strategy very quickly, attacking or defend-ing. But Jeroen says: I’m good in outside leg throws. Hip- and shoulder throws are harder. I find it difficult to feel whether my opponent is right in front of me. That is important when you start a hip- of shoulder  throw. When doing a shoulder throw is still happens too often that I do not bend my knees enough. When I do that, the throw comes off better.

 

What I find more difficult is doing those techniques in which I have to do several ac-tion one after the other, like arm locks or strangulations. I have to remember too many things: how does this go? Am I not forgetting anything? During matches there is no time for this. When doing an arm lock I can’t feel whether I’m applying it prop-erly. Of course I notice when my opponent, if he is smart, he submit tagging but that’s the only way for me to know whether I did the arm lock properly. Another thing about learning new techniques is: An explanation alone is not enough. I must apply a technique myself in order to understand it properly. Sometimes that’s easier than at other times.

 

The J.B.N. is trying to elevate the level of VI judo by organizing communal training and promoting the national VI team. The aim is to take part in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.

 

Cees Monderen

The Paralympics are the most important sports event in the world for top athletes with a physical or visual impairment. It is an enormous event, in scale  as well as diversity. The Paralympic games take place every four years in the same host country and the  same town as where the Olympic Games take place. There are summer as well as winter games.

Two weeks after the closing ceremony of the Olympics the Paralympics take place. The athletes compete in 18 sports among which is judo for the blind and visually im-paired. The games are organized by the International Paralympics Committee.

 

History

The Paralympics started in 1948 to help wounded soldiers from the 2nd World War. Nowadays the event is the world’s greatest sports event save for the Olympic Games.

 

The first Paralympics were held in 1948 in the English city Stoke Mandeville. By using sports, the British Sir Ludwig Guttman hoped  to improve the quality of life for the wounded soldiers. Only four years later did these games become an international event. In 1952 Dutch athletes took part in the Wheelchair Games as well as athletes from Great Britain. It was the beginning of the international Paralympic movement.

 

Olympic Character

It would take until 1960 for the games to get an Olympic character. In that year, right after the Olympics in Rome, games were held under the name of ‘Paralympics’. Four hundred athletes competed in eight different sports. Six of these sports are still part of the Paralympic programme. They are: archery, swimming, fencing, basketball. table tennis and athletics.

From 1960 onwards the Paralympics are held every four years, always in the same year as the Olympics.

In 1976 the Paralympics were open for athletes with different kinds of impairments, such as  physical, mental or visual impairments.

In the same year the first winter games took place.

The 1988 edition had another first: that year the Paralympics were held in the same accommodations as the Olympics.

 

Name

The 12th edition of the Olympic games took place, just as the Olympics, in Athens. While the Olympic games return to ‘home ground’,  for the Paralympics it is the first time  they take place in Greece. It was only in the 5th edition (Toronto 1976) that a Greek athlete competed in the Paralympics.

 

In 1988 Greece  joined in for the first time with an official delegation. During the Para-lympics in Sidney 71 athletes from Greece participated.

 

The Greek delegation won in Sidney for the items athletics, swimming, weight lifting, basketball and judo, a total of eleven medals; four golden, four silver and three bronze medals. Greece became number 33 in the overall list of rankings.

 

The Greek language played an important part in the naming of the event. The Greek proposition ‘para ’means close by. Because the philosophy behind the Paralympics is adhering as closely as possible to the rules of the Olympics’’, the name Paralympics was chosen.

 

The number of participants of the Paralympics has risen from four hundred in 1960 to almost four thousand in 2000.  Holland not only participated right from the start but also organized the events itself. In 1980 the Paralympics took place in Arnhem.

Visually impaired judokas are subdivided, apart from weight of course, in three cate-gories:

 

Class B1:

Absolute absence of the perception of light in both eyes or a slight perception, but an inability to recognize the shape of a hand at a little distance.

 

Class B2:

Recognition of the shape of a hand with a visual sharpness of maximum 2/60 and/or within an angle of maximum 5 degrees.

 

Class B3:

Recognition of the shape of a hand with a visual sharpness of more than 2/60 up to a maximum of 6/60 and/or within an angle of more than 5 but less than 20 degrees.

 

IMPORTANT!!!!

All measuring should be done with the best eye and optimum correction. This means that during testing possible lenses or glasses should be used, whether of not they are worn during the match.

 

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