JudoNotes

Sensei will be having a dojo tournament on Saturday, September 6, the weekend after Labor Day and two weeks before the East Coast. Dojo tournaments are a good way to learn how tournament matches work, and they're fun. Sensei uses them as occasions to hand out promotions.

As usual, I'll be there with my camcorder and I'll post highlights to YouTube. If you're curious to see how your judo looks (and I personally think it's very interesting and sometimes instructive to see), you can ask me to post your match to YouTube or simply give you a copy.

Sensei would like to have a dojo tournament some Saturday before the East Coast. The date is TBD. Stay tuned.

From the NY Times:

Rousey beat Germany’s Annett Boehm, 10-0, for the bronze at 70 kilograms. She won with a 10-point yuko, which is judo terminology for sleeve throw.

At least this was corrected by a couple of people in the comments. One person bemoaned:

The way the article is currently written is like seeing a 110 on a baseball scoreboard and saying the team hit a 110 point run, rather than reading it as 1 run, 1 hit.

In fairness, I can understand part of the confusion because of the way judo scores are filled in. Having one yuko is displayed as 10 rather than 010, which I don't understand, though maybe it makes scores easier to read. A three-digit score is always higher than a 2-digit or 1-digit score, and scores with different numbers of digits may be easier for competitors to distinguish with a quick glance.

But "judo terminology for sleeve throw"? Yeah, if I were reporting for the NEW YORK TIMES on a sport I knew nothing about, where the terms were in a foreign language, I wouldn't bother to make sure I got my terms right either. For that matter, if I were the New York Times, I wouldn't bother to send someone who knew what they were talking about.

Our dojo was used for a segment on Sinovision, which is a Chinese-language cable station. At the moment you can see it here. (I say "at the moment" because I don't know how long Sinovision keeps videos on their web site.) It's an introduction to judo for people who might be seeing the sport for the first time as they watch the Olympics. They also do a brief profile of Zhou Ai-Ming (aka Amy), whom I've seen in the dojo a couple of times but haven't met. She's working at the Olympics in Beijing.

There is a text version of the piece, with photos that aren't from the video. For those of you who don't speak Mandarin or read Chinese, here's the article translated to English by Google:

• page 1
• page 2
• page 3
• page 4

Note that the "Ai" in Zhou Ai-Ming's name means "love," which is why that word appears several times in the translation.

Here's a list of those three-letter country codes on the backs of the Olympic competitors. If you're in an educational mood, you can click on a link for each country to learn something about it.

Chiming in a little late with some notes on watching the Olympics online.

Watching live:

If you can stay up late enough, you can watch all this year's judo matches live online. What a great luxury! Go to NBCOlympics.com, click on "TV & Online Listings", and follow instructions. You'll have to install a video plugin called Silverlight. It was simple and painless for me on my Mac.

Watching both mats at once:

The judo matches are happening on two mats. You can't use separate windows in your browser to watch both mats at once, or at least I haven't figured out a way. However, it is possible watch up to four live events at once, although at lower quality. Click on "Enlarge Video" and a panel of controls will appear on the left edge of the video. The top one of those controls lets you pick one main video and up to three other live videos to display simultaneously.

Watching later:

The judo matches start at midnight New York time and run to 8:00AM. If those times aren't convenient for you, you can watch some of the matches afterwards by clicking "Rewind". I don't know if NBC is planning to make all the matches available. As of this writing, Ryoko Tani's losing match is not available, and I'm really curious to see it. (I was actually watching live that night on two computers at once, one for each mat, but fell asleep. D'oh!) I'll probably check out the commentary on JudoForum when I get a chance; I'm sure there were some stunned reactions.

Another option for watching matches afterwards is to skip NBC altogether and go to Judovision.org. You could also search YouTube, though there's a good chance anything you're looking for is already on Judovision, and quicker to find there.

Gripes:

Unfortunately, all the videos in the simultaneous mode are smaller and fuzzier than when you commit to watching just one. And switching between them is not as snappy as I'd like — you lose a few seconds while the video is buffered.

You can't rewind a live event, so if you miss something exciting, you have to count on the instant replay or hope the match becomes available later in "Rewind" mode.

What I'd really like is if all the judo matches would be made available in high-definition, like some other events. I suppose I should be happy the matches are as available as they are.

In case you haven't seen the sign in the dojo: the date of the East Coast has been moved. The new dates are:

• Sept 20, 2008 (SAT) Seniors – Men, Women & Masters
• Sept 21, 2008 (SUN) Juniors – Boys & Girls

Adjust your training accordingly.

Entry form is available at Cranford JKC.