IJF President Vizer: European Open is for club level

Last weekend the European Open was held in Rome and Oberwart. In a busy schedule with an increasing number of senior events the IJF President Marius Vizer was asked for the status of the European Open.

The European Open have changed names many times from A-tournaments, Super-A tournaments, World Cups, Super World Cups and since 2009 most valuable events were inducted into the IJF World Tour.

The current continental open events in Europe suffered from the downgrade by the IJF. Also the IJF upgraded the number of points of Grand Prix events to 700 for the winner, making the gap with a continental open (100 points for the winner) even bigger.

In Oberwart last weekend 179 fought in Austria, a bit more than in 2017, but 100 less than in 2018 and far from the record in 2012 (380).

The IJF President said in his twitter Q&A: “In my opinion the European Open events, for example, have to be a target for the strong club level athletes.”

It is another confirmation that the continental events are downgraded to club level and especially the European events that dominated the agenda in the past, are now preparation events or a step-up to the World Tour level. The difference of European Open, which is still an Olympic qualification event, and the European Open is not very clear. European Open is usually for one gender as many organisers wanted to keep their status, and the European Cup is for both men and women with top events such as Saarbrucken and Bratislava and problematic events for instance in Dubrovnik with last year 156 athletes in 14 categories.