The President / General Secretary,
Member Associations and Departmental Units,
Judo Federation of India

Sub.: New IJF Refereeing Rules - 2013

Dear Friends,

IJF and JUA is implementing the New IJF Refereeing Rules in all IJF and JUA Events, starting from February 2013.

The changes of the Refereeing Rules which received from IJF are given below.

All the members are requested to make all required efforts to create awareness among International and Continental referees, coaches and players who are preparing for the International events.

With best regards,

[ Mukesh KUMAR ]
General Secretary, JFI 

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CHANGES OF IJF – RULES - 2013

Referee and judges

Only one referee on the mat and one referee at a video check table with a radio communication assisted by a referee commission member or another referee will judge the fights. A rotation system will be implemented for the Referees. The IJF Jury will interfere only when they consider it to be necessary.

Why?

To the question: will there be only one referee to judge the fight? The answer is clearly no. There will always be three people. Only the distribution of the roles will change. Instead of having three referees on the mat, there will be one referee on the mat and one referee sitting at the table with the video. He will be assisted by a member of the refereeing commission or an other referee, whose expertise in the use of video is recognized. So, there will always be three people to judge a fight. The IJF jury will intervene only in exceptional situations. The sole purpose of this approach is to ensure that the fighter who really won the fight, would leave the tatami as the winner. For this purpose, a direct and clear refereeing procedure on the mat, with a single referee, assisted by an other referee and a member of the refereeing commission, must make things more fluid. A Rotation will be organized among the referees to maintain the fairness between the fighters and to ensure an optimal recovery of the referees. The referees will be directly involved in the video assistance.

Technical assessment

-IPPON: to give more value «to take into account only the techniques with real impact on the ground on the back.

Why?

By definition, a clear ippon is a movement executed with strength, speed, and control, on the back. A return to this definition will be observed, in order to give real value to the objective of any competitor: to score ippon. Judo is a spectator sport as long as the goal is clearly defined.

Landing on the bridge position

All situations of landing on the bridge position will be considered Ippon.

Why?

Considered as a dangerous technic avoiding to be thrown, any attempt to land (for UKE - the one, who is thrown) on the bridge position will be considered as ippon for TORI (the one who has executed the throwing technic). 

Penalties

During the fight there will be three Shidos, and the fourth Hansoku-make (3 warnings and then disqualification). Shidos do not give points to the other fighter, only technical scores can give points on the scoreboard.
At the end of the fight, if scoring is equal, the one with less Shido wins.
If the fight continues to golden score (due to a draw), the first receiving a Shido loses, or the first scoring a technique will win.

Why?

In order to avoid that an increasing number of competitors try to win by penalties instead of trying to win with a score, and in order to restore the balance in favor of the scores obtained by judo techniques, the penalty philosophy completely changes. Penalties still exist and after four of them, the athlete is disqualified, as it has been the case until now. However, there are no more parallel between the scores (yuko, waza-ari) and penalties. The advantage is given to the fighter who attacks and scores. But if nothing is scored (no technical advantage), the one with the least penalties wins. Once again, this gives the advantage to the competitor who attempts the most to execute techniques and who is practicing the least anti-judo.

Penalized with Shido

-Breaking the grip with 2 hands.
-Cross gripping should be followed by an immediate attack. Same rule as for the belt gripping and one side gripping.
The referees should strictly penalize the contestants who do not engage in a quick Kumikata grip or who try not to be gripped by the opponent.
-To hug the opponent for a throw. (Bear hug).

Why?

The take the grip (kumikata) is part of a judo contest. Searching the best kumikata to perform beautiful techniques is logical and necessary. But to prevent the opponent to grip, if there is no immediate attack, is not constructive. Recently, it was found that the process of blocking the opponent became predominant in many fights, leading to long and boring combats. Thus, the decisions that have been taken aim to correct this. The goal is not to prevent the kumikata work, but rather to make it active and constructive.

Penalized with Hansoku-make:

All attacks or blocking with one or two hands or with one or two arms below the belt in Tachi-waza.

Why?

The aim of judo, as is has already been pointed out is simple: to score ippon. For this, there are many possibilities, which make judo a spectacular sport, but nevertheless a technical activity. A greater clarity is needed to make it more understandable by judoka themselves, to make it easier to judge, but also to make it more affordable to the public. The direct leg grabs were banned from judo competition in recent years. The effects are obvious: some techniques disappeared for the benefit of the reappearance of spectacular movements that couldn\'t be executed due to the position of the fighters. The exception made for direct leg grab in case of cross grip made the refereeing yet sometimes complicated, despite the intervention of the video. As such, any attack of blocking below the belt, during standing work, will now be sanctioned by Hansoku-make, without exception.

Osaekomi, Kansetsu-waza and Shime-waza

- Will continue also outside of the contest area as long as Osaekomi was called inside.
- Osaekomi scores 10 seconds for Yuko, 15 seconds for Waza-ari, and 20 seconds for Ippon.
The Kansetsu-waza and Shime-waza initiated inside the contest area and recognized as being effective to the opponent can be maintained even if the contestants are outside the contest area.

Why?

A lack of consistency was observed due to the fact that an action, in standing work, could begin within the fighting area and end outside (giving a score), but it was not valid for the ground work. From Paris Grand Slam on, an immobilization, which starts inside, can be completed outside the fighting area. The only possibility to stop the immobilization will be to get out of it. Just going out of the fighting area is not sufficient anymore. It is the same for arm locks and chokes. As long as they are clearly engaged inside the fighting area (outstretched arm, engaged arm lock or choke engaged), the conclusion may be held outside. If the arm is not stretched or if there is not throttling, the combat will stop and start again from the standing position.
Downtime is reduced to make combat more dynamic. Indeed, it is the first 10 seconds of immobilization that are the most important. In most cases, after 10 or 15 seconds, there is little chances to escape and abandonment often occur.

The bow

When entering the tatami area, fighters should walk to the entrance of the contest area at the same time and bow to each other into the contest area. The contestants must not shake hands BEFORE the start of the contest.

 Why?

Judo is a sport whose values are worldwide known and recognized. In Judo, there is a \'ceremony\', which is accepted by everybody and which is part of the DNA of our sport. It must be respected. It is the symbol of our moral code and it warns against any drift. That the fighters will be asked to really respect the bow procedure as it has been defined since the invention of judo. At the beginning of the bout, they will not be allowed to use other signs than the bow. At the end of the fight, after the bow, the fighters are allowed to shake hands and to congratulate themselves with respect.

Duration of Contests

- No time limit for Golden Score (Hantei is cancelled).

Why?
Recently, everybody agreed that too many fights ended in golden score with a referee flag decision. With the fight common to an end (towards the referee decision), some fighters relied on that flag decision to decide between themselves, while the goal of judo is and will remain to score ippon, or at least to score an advantage. To avoid that, the removal of the flags decision (Hantei) was recorded. The golden score will now be \'open\' until a fighter scores an advantage or is penalized, the decision will be made only on the technical merits of judoka.