14th International Open, G-Judo Tourniment Beverwijk

I met RHK’s Chairman Tomas Rundqvist at Amsterdam Airport on Friday. We had to sit and wait for our drive for almost four hours before our transport would pick us up for check-in at the hotel. The 4 hour wait meant we missed the transport with 1 min. Once upon a time, at the hotel, which proved to be one of the nicest rooms I have ever slept in, we left our pack and went out to town to eat. We had been recommended to go to a nearby restaurant. When we got there we met some friends / colleagues from England whom we sat together with. The same thing here, we were advised to choose the ribs from the menu and it turned out that it was a very good choice. I have probably not tasted better ribs.

Then it was time to go to bed to cope with the day of the competition.

When we got to the hall we met Jan Mark De Haan from Staffanstorp’s Judo club. He was there to see the arrangement for Staffanstorp Open which will be held in May.

At the judging meeting, it is very clear that everything was in Dutch so I do not know what was said. When I asked one of the supervisors, they only said that I would judge as I usually do and that I was in charge of maths. 5. Nice to have been in Holland before showing that this was done well.

The contest had attracted about 250 competitors with different disabilities from across Europe and, in turn, is one of Europe’s biggest handicap races.

When on the mat, everything worked properly, I had the help of a Dutch colleague whom I judged earlier and a beginner. There we got to help him right. The problem for my part was that he could speak Dutch as well as 4 words in Swedish that were “hello how are you?” But we fixed this as well. One of the parts that I love with Judon is that it does not matter if you master the language or not, if you want to be able to help each other anyway, and if you are a more well-trained judge, it’s actually our duty to help our colleagues like are less routine. If you do this then our beloved sport will develop for the better, which we all of course want.

In the afternoon, our matte gained the strength of an IJF judge and the Commission decided that anyone who was a new HK judge would judge a little on our rug to get a good experience, in other words, our carpet was wrapped up with 6 new HK judges. But even this went well on our rug and everything was running very well. In fact, we had no incidents on the carpet that had to be sorted out and we had no damage to the carpet, which is very nice not to have disabilities.

At the end of the refereeing the meeting looked so much again, but everything was then in Dutch and when I asked about what was said, they just said that I had been doing very well. Herman Rurup, one of those responsible for the judges, as well as he was the supervisor of Special Olympics when I was there last summer, gave me the Dutch Judiciary’s HK judge’s letter while informing him that this was sanctioned by the Dutch Jewish Federation. Fully shocked and almost touched, I received this judge tray while Herman Rurup praised my contribution as HK judge while there were a lot of handshakes with different boys in the suit.

Now on the planet is something late home after we had to change plan because someone thought the wing was loose before starting … .. The feeling is almost indescribable to me that now the second weekend on the rake has been confirmed that you are a good judge. Last weekend, I had to judge the finals at the International Master Bremen Tour, one of the finals I got in the middle between Japan and Belgium in -73 kg and this weekend I received this estimate. After standing and stamping for a lot of years in the same place as a judge, it feels good that it has finally released. What was the secret? Well, I began to believe in myself.

On a shaky plane on our way home from Amsterdam to Copenhagen.

 

Manuel Santos

A Proud Special Needs Judge