2007 World Champion Ruben Houkes speaks his past heroes

At a media meeting of 80 national federation Former Olympic bronze medallist and 2007 World Champion Ruben Houkes, Director of the Judo for Children Commission presented to speak about his heroes of the past.

“It’s an honour being here and sharing our work with you. I’ve been doing judo all of my life. I wasn’t born when the 1964 Games happened but Anton Geesink was always my hero. He was not only one of the biggest champions, shown in photos winning against Kiminaga for his Olympic title but he was a man of great character. There was one photo in particular which has always stayed with me, of the moment he won. His teammates and staff were about to enter the tatami in their excitement but Geesink raised his hand and that photo shows him stopping them from coming on to the tatami, respecting the values of judo. We should embrace this as a whole judo family."

"Another of my heroes is David Ogilvy, perhaps less well known within our community, but a hero of marketing and communication, often referred to as ‘the father of advertising.’  He inspired me to promote our sport in a beautiful way, just like he would have, as a great ad’ man.

‘If you want to be interesting, be interesting,’ said Ogilvy and we must make sure we, as judo, stay interesting. He also said, ‘Tell the truth but make the truth fascinating.’ His simple ideas resonate with a lot of people.

Judo for Children is all about marketing, understanding and hooking the market, understanding growth, research, branding, scope of influence. In the Netherlands we position judo as a methodology and not just a sport. Sure, we do it on the tatami but we want to be relevant beyond that and even into the classroom. We attract media attention and really use my background as a champion to get the first interest.

We always understood we were competing with other sports in our country for attention and needed to gain a different position and so we went with the social and emotional education of children and then collaborated with Disney to leverage the values of judo in the classroom. Now we have 55 national federations working this way in schools via our ideas and methodologies."