head referee director Daniel Lascau wants to eliminate potential injuries

Florin Daniel Lascau, 1991 world champion, IJF Head Referee Director is an essential member of the team monitoring the execution of the IJF refereeing rules. Lascau saw some positive trends but also speaks about the head dive situation where many athletes have to adjust and that’s not so easy.

Transition

Transition has most often been used in the traditional way, with throws moving into groundwork from same athlete but we have also had some athletes getting thrown but then turning their opponent and taking the win on the ground, from being under the most pressure. They aren’t giving up, showing a very positive attitude, knowing that the contests are not over until the criteria for a win have been met fully.

Golden Score

Golden score has still been a big challenge for some of the athletes who did not have enough experience of how to manage their fights to stop the extension of the fight. Learning how to use energy efficiently is essential. The excessive expenditure of energy in a long golden score contest affects the contests that follow.

There were surprise numbers of ippon from within the last few seconds of fights when athletes were behind on the scoreboard. This again shows a good attitude towards the search for ippon is being kept throughout. We have seen many of those contests here in Astana and it is a really great sign; the necessary emphasis is understood by the majority.

Hansoku for head diving

Throughout the three days of competition in Kazachstan we had around 15 hansoku-make and half of those were for using the head where tori, in their intention to throw, was using the head straight to the mat. This is a matter that can of course be changed in training and should be, by using crash mats in nage-komi and performing throws with rotation that are executed 20cm or more above the mat. The aspect of safety is important on the WJT, which is followed and copied by our young judoka worldwide. It is our duty to eliminate any kind of potential injuries for both tori and uke, wherever possible.”