[carline]

Thats all about money, you can't say that he was thinking about his future achievements when he made that decision. Ands thats all on the back of olympic success.

Hello Gibbo Sensei,

What if you take a 17-year-old high school student into the same situation as Amir Kahn, but in the context of kendo. I'm pretty sure if anyone getting 2nd at the AJKC at 17 will be invited into Keishicho straight away - and get paid for it.

Those kendoka at the police still gets paid for what they do (since they are highly capable and no one does it better). Dedication or not, I don't see that too much of a difference in Amir Kahn's case. Nothing wrong doing what your talent lies..

[kranskregyan]

Hello Gibbo Sensei,

What if you take a 17-year-old high school student into the same situation as Amir Kahn, but in the context of kendo. I'm pretty sure if anyone getting 2nd at the AJKC at 17 will be invited into Keishicho straight away - and get paid for it.

Those kendoka at the police still gets paid for what they do (since they are highly capable and no one does it better). Dedication or not, I don't see that too much of a difference in Amir Kahn's case. Nothing wrong doing what your talent lies..

The difference there is that the 17 year old will still have to do his police training, and should a particular situation require it, police duties, which while although Japan isn't the most dangerous country in the world, can still be dangerous depending on what unit he is in.

Amir Kahn will also get paid to fight, and won't halve his purse for not going to school or what ever, and boxing will pay mega bucks for everything he wants to do,while the police still lose half their pay for taking these sabitcals. And also the amounts of pay differ fantastically as well.

[AndrewBoss]

Didn't want to step into this muck again but... it's not that competitions are bad. It's that Olympic competition, with it's high profile and higher dollars, with countries reputations on the line based on medal count, has the possibility, some would say certainty, of altering kendo. First by changing competition to make it more TV friendly and easily understood, and then through the influence of governments as they wave tax dollars in front of the renmei and make them do it their way. Do you know there are some judo dojo that don't practice ukemi? The idea is ukemi is admitting you will be thrown and damn it, we're going to be doing the throwing. How long before we have one kendoka in blue and the other in white, sponsor logos on the doh and electronic scoring? I give it two olympics, max, if we go this route. How long before we have strip mall dojo whose sole focus is Olympic team competing with old-style dojos who care about the budo (and with the Olympic ones winning because of the kids with the medal dreams and the psycho sports parents pushing them)? Look at TKD if you don't think so.

[abOfU9nJ]

Didn't want to step into this muck again but... it's not that competitions are bad. It's that Olympic competition, with it's high profile and higher dollars, with countries reputations on the line based on medal count, has the possibility, some would say certainty, of altering kendo. First by changing competition to make it more TV friendly and easily understood, and then through the influence of governments as they wave tax dollars in front of the renmei and make them do it their way. Do you know there are some judo dojo that don't practice ukemi? The idea is ukemi is admitting you will be thrown and damn it, we're going to be doing the throwing. How long before we have one kendoka in blue and the other in white, sponsor logos on the doh and electronic scoring? I give it two olympics, max, if we go this route. How long before we have strip mall dojo whose sole focus is Olympic team competing with old-style dojos who care about the budo (and with the Olympic ones winning because of the kids with the medal dreams and the psycho sports parents pushing them)? Look at TKD if you don't think so.

What Gedzwill-sensei said!

I was one of the folks who was on the Medical Committee of the LAOOC. You should have seen the maneuvering around the infamous testosterone/epitestosterone rule for using androgens. No doping scandals in kendo since no one enforces the rules, because it isn't important in the long run who wins or loses.

Kendo has strictures against "doping" but I have yet to see Doping Control with split samples, chaperones, evidence chains, etc. at a kendo tournament. [If anyone has experience at the National Championships and/or Worlds I would be interested if doping control at the "highest levels" of takai is performed]. The cost of doping is prohibitive ~$100-150 per testee and all medal winners and a few other random participants are tested. Factor that into the entry fees and see how many tournaments would even break even.

I notice that the older you are (and it's not kendo rank but life experience) the less you want the sport to go "pro"!

[Goodwin]

As a boxer and boxing enthusiast, I have seen the disgraceful Olypicification of the sport. As a backgrounder, Olympic boxing up to the early '90's was judged by 3 judges based on boxing point scoring principles still used in amateur boxing today. Olympic boxing went to a point scoring system using the "touch" method a la fencing where the glove has white areas used to score valid punches/touches in valid areas (head and torso). Each touch is scored one point based on approval of 2 of 3 judges. This has created a mentality in boxing of "I can win by jabbing and not really boxing" where the clearly superior boxer by knowledgeable standards loses out to the boxer that can jab his way to a win. This is definitely not how I want to see kendo progress. Despite this though, I would like to see the IKF/AJKF move to be recognized as the sole governing body of worldwide kendo so as to preserve the principles of kendo that we have come to believe.

[Vobomei]

Mad God, I'm glad you're so confident in human nature as to feel that we'll all be able to keep ticking along as we have done. But we have the bad examples of judo and TKD behind us. It doesn't matter what we say anyways. Kendo hasn't the slightest chance of becoming Olympic, it just won't sell enough Coca-Cola. So this argument is academic.

[lzwha]

Seems to me you're very conservative and afraid of changes. You should be able to "handle" the problems properly, not run out from them.
Just to make you more confident, remember when kendo was created most of Kenjutsu senseis didn't agree to that. I think you agree it was not so bad anyway...

Unless of course you belive the people on the top of Kendo world is not capable to handle such kind of problem and will be lost totally.
If this is your meaning, yes, the only alternative people have is keeping Kendo as a minor and healthy sport activity.

MG

[enactolaelant]

Olympic Taekwondo is one good reason not to put kendo in the olympics.

Watch a few games. One guy kicks another guy, and then falls down flat on his back. Haha! I say, thinking that he now must have lost the match, as he is lying on the ground. But no, he scored a point and won. And I was like, WTF!?
'nuff said.

haha, best reason ever.

i need to read more of you *grins*

putting kendo into the olympics ... it would be nice for visibility, but i don't think it would help its history.

how many major tournament is there in kendo? the main events ?