The 14th medical seminar and the 7th administration and organisation seminar kicked off this morning in Malta with 52 EJU delegates and participants representing 26 countries.
Mr. Envic Galea, General Secretary of the European Judo Union opened the seminar and gave some updates about the various University courses available for judoka.
Mr. Michal Vachun, Vice President of the European Judo Union gave some interesting statistics from the London Olympic Games which were really good Games from the point of view of participation and medal distribution. Europe performed very well in this edition, leading the medal table of the continents.
During the joint session in the morning, information about ADAMS was given out to the present federations. Ms. Louisa Galea, from the EJU General Secretariat, went through the processes of creating athletes and submitting TUEs since the EJU will be moving towards a paper less TUE system and adopting ADAMS as their antidoping database.
After the coffee break, the participants went to their respective groups. The administrators had an intensive session followed by a Question and Answer session with Mr. Vadim Gerasimov, programmer of Jumas12, the EJU online membership and competition registration system.
In the medical room, Mr. Envic Galea, who is also Chairman of the Medical Commission of the EJU, had a good discussion about age groups for cadets after a presentation from Dr. Peter Smolders from Belgium.
After the lunch, the first intervention in the medical room was in the field of sport psychology presented by Lt. Col. Dr. Pal Herlofsen. Dr. Herlofsen spoke about the importance of Sport Psychology and said that our founder, Professor Jigoro Kano, had already foreseen the importance of sport psychology in high performance competition.
This subject was very well received, and will definitely feature in the next medical seminar.
In the administrators room, the first intervention was by Dr. Laszlo Toth, EJU General Treasurer, who reminded the organisers that the EJU is ready to negotiate its rights in events. Mr. Michal Vachun then gave the delegates updates from the world of sport and briefed the administrators about possible changes to the rules. The event organisers handbook was also reviewed.
The seminar will continue tomorrow with judo specific medical presentations, an outlook on the whole calendar of 2013 and bidding procedures for future international events.
Photos can be found here