Since retiring from competitive judo, Olympic silver medallist Rustam ORUJOV of Azerbaijan has been more and more present on the education side of things and is a member of the EJU Athlete’s Commission. Already this year, Orujov attended the IJF Referee and Coaching Seminar in Gyor, Hungary with a team from Azerbaijan including Head Coach, Richard TRAUTMANN.
Now on the eve of the Baku Grand Slam 2024, the IJF Academy team travelled to the land of wind and fire to complete another coaching course, ensuring the highest level of coaches for the future generation.
At home, completing the IJF Academy course and taking on a new challenge, Kata, Orujov realised it wasn’t all plain sailing. It may come as a surprise that the technical wizard was a bit nervous for this and spent multiple days preparing for this exam, but the winner mentality pulled him through. He completed this with team mate, also recently retired Orkhan SAFAROV.
Today I graduated from the judo academy course, this a great honour for me. I am very glad that I learned something new about judo, new subtleties of judo. I believe that all coaches should take this course, regardless if you are Olympic Champion or a World Champion. I believe this is very important for the intricacies of judo.
Chair of the IJF Academy, Envic GALEA, delivered statistics in Gyor last month, and can now update with many more participants,
In 2013, this course was introduced with 12 participants, now 11 years on, it has become a tremendous success, based in five continents, 165 countries and over 3000 coaches certified. A huge benefit for coaches no is that the course is available in 14 languages.
Author: Thea Cowen