Rules, refereeing and the future of judo

I just watched the new IJF refereeing guidelines and they really made me worried. The leg grabbing rule leaves so much room for interpretation that the referee becomes more important than the fighters. Many situations that look perfectly normal fighting are now hansokumake. This is not sport and its against my idea of fighting. Imagine someone who's worked all his life for olympics and gets a hansokumake just because his hand was in beetween fighters, not grabbing anything, just was there indecisively for a second?

http://refereeusb.judobase.org/2016/app/#

go to "07 hsk leg grabing"

For the rule, I can imagine two solutions that make sense
1) Allow all leg grabbing and give shido for passivity when posture is preventing attacs. That would be the best.
2) Give only shido for touching the legs and only when the cloth of gi is grabbed in hand or the palm of hand clearly prevented the opponents movement.

Is there any way for judoka to speak out, let IJF hear what we think?

The discussion of the leg grab rule has ... been ... beaten ... to ... death ... on this forum. Add a dose of me not caring very much (i.e giving a rat's ass) about European jacket wrestling as a changeling child in place of judo, and you won't get any more comments from me about the rule.

However the link you posted was very cool, thank you! The tutorial was well done for the most part, and though a few of the calls I just don't understand I think it is a well organized exposition of calls.

In other words, I guess it's still not HSM if you are Japanese and your opponent Korean

Yes the discussion has been beaten to death but the rule is still not dead. One would have expected it to turn something we can live with once we get accustomed to it, but it seems the calls and the refereeing are still somewhat hard to understand.

There were other rules too in the series that are hard to comprehend. I go to 10 - 15 tournaments per year, been doing it for 7 years, and I still have difficulty understanding the rules. Either I'm stupid or the rules are stupid.

Is there any feedback channel that reaches IJF?

Osaecomic wrote:Is there any feedback channel that reaches IJF?

Yes, it would appear that the IJF listens very carefully to it's own opinions and any voice that supports those opinions.