The EJU Olympic Training Camp is at full speed in sunny Madrid. It is being hosted by the Royal Spanish Judo federation within their national judo centre at the sports university in Madrid.The EJU is trying to set up a schedule of national federations who would like to host these events in the future. Madrid was the third such camp this year.
Some great athletes attended the OTC. One of the big stars was Greek World Champion Ilias Iliadis, a full Russian team attended as well other nations like Kazachstan, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Portugal and more than 50 Spanish judoka.
There were two sessions per day led by the head spanish coach as well as members of the EJU coach commission namely Ezio Gamba and Udo Quellmalz both former olympic champions.
Bernd Achilles of the EJU referees commission was on hand to give advice to the athletes and coaches on the new IJF rules. He was very ably assisted by Ben Spijkers, international referee and Olympic bronze medallist from Seoul 1988. The emphasis of these sessions were on the cross guard grip the and the interpretation of the rule from different situations.
There are short video footage taken of these sessions available in our youtube channel as some stills of the randori participants, published in our media gallery.
Ilias iliadis commented: “This type of practice is not available in Greece and so this camp is very important for me.”
The university campus had all of the facilities for elite performers including weight training, running track and swimming pool and full medical support. The athletes were accommodated full board in a very comfortable hotel only a short coach ride from the training hall.
The plan in 2011 is to roll out another eight similar camps across Europe and information about these camps are already in the calendar for next year.
Sports Director Densign White who was in attendence in Madrid commented: “The Madrid camp was a great success and gives us a platform to build on and of course we want to improve the experiences of the camp for the athletes everytime. If there are countries who are able to organise similar camps please contact me as soon as possible.”
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