Dear Judokas,
With regards to your worries towards the IJF decision to limit the migration of judokas to other sports and disciplines, I would like to make the following clarifications: IJF, the Continental Unions, the National Federations, as well as the Judo clubs made serious efforts in these past years on all levels, in order to support and participate in the development reform of our sport.
The International Judo Federation and its Member Federations have extensively invested in training and competition programs, setting up of structures, equipment donation and media coverage. All these investments must be preserved, like in any other sports, having in their rules a return toward the formative structures.
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All our achievements, as well as our objective to have the team event for the first time in Tokyo 2020, strengthens our conviction that we must maintain our sport in a homogenous, unitary, clean and integral community, in order to achieve all our other objectives for the following period. Judo wishes to preserve its heritage.
It is important to remember that when wrestling was temporarily removed from the Olympic program, one of the reasons was also the fact that this sport assimilated the MMA community, Grappling and other disciplines.
IJF does not exclude collaboration and partnership with other combat sports disciplines, but these must be carried out within the limits of mutual advantages and without the migration of athletes from one community to the other. Some agreements were established with federations that specify the conditions of participation.
In this period of reforms and development of Judo, other sports and disciplines noticed our evolution and they showed to be more and more interested in attracted our athletes ready formed, due to the investments made by their clubs, their National Federations, their Continental Unions, as well as IJF, in order to benefit from their services and to generate financial benefits in the interests of certain leaders from other sports, as well as in order to promote the image of these sports through the performances of our athletes, achieved with a lot of efforts and hard work in the Judo competitions at all levels, as well as the Olympic Games. Moreover, private bodies of match organization exploit the work of our federations without any compensation.
At the same time, the migration of athletes to several sports would only represent a spiritual contamination of our sport once these athletes come back to Judo, a sport whose spirit and values were acquired and transmitted through generations, from Jigoro Kano onwards. We should not forget the history of Judo and the merits of all the heroes and legends of our sport.
Freedom is one of the supreme values of humanity and each of us is free to choose a path in life, just like I myself did, when I chose to immigrate to a free world in my youth, but we should not forget that before Freedom, Honor and Loyalty are primary values of any community or generation. The principles and values of our sport are more than enough for individual perfection, on a sports level as well as on the formational level for society.
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