VISUALLY IMPAIRED JUDO

The British V.I. Judo Squad started in 1985 and the first European tournament was held in Paris, France in 1987. Four countries participated and the competition was for men only.

It became a Paralympic sport at the Seoul Games in 1988. The second European V.I. Judo Championships was hosted by Manchester in 1989, and European and Paralympic competitions have taken place regularly since then.

The first World Championships took place in Assen in 1990. Great Britain has a very good track record of international medals. Simon Jackson is our front-runner. He won his first Gold Paralympic medal at the Seoul Paralympics in 1988 at the age of sixteen and has competed at every Paralympics, World and European Championships since. He has been World Champion and is current European Champion. He is unusual in that he has held titles at several different weight categories.

He is a role model for our young and aspiring V.I. squad members, who are trying to emulate his achievements.

We have had many other successful players who have contributed to Great Britain’s medal tally at the Paralympic games including Paul Lewis, Terry Powell, David Hurst, David Hodgkins and Ian Rose.

Visual Classification

Visually Impaired sports are subject to eyesight classification, and fall into three categories, B1, B2 and B3.

For athletes wishing to take part in national or international competitions there are three defined degrees of ‘blindness’ laid down by the International Blind Sports Association.

B1: No light perception in either eye (total lack of sight) up to light perception but inability to recognize the shape of a hand at any distance or in any direction.

B2: Better than B1, so from the ability to recognise the shape of a hand up to visual acuity of 2/60 and/or visual field of less than 5 degrees.

B3: Better than B2, so from visual acuity of above 2/60 up to visual acuity of 6/60 and/or visual field of more than 5 degrees and less than 20 degrees.

All athletes who use contact or corrective lenses must wear them for classification, whether they intend to compete wearing them or not.

In most sports the determining factor is the sight in the BETTER eye and WITH BEST CORRECTION with either glasses or contact lenses, even if these are not worn in competition.

In everyday terms these definitions can be explained as follows:

B1 is quite straightforward – if at best you can’t do better than distinguish between light and dark it’s easy to understand.

B2 and B2 is more of a problem for fully sighted people to understand. Most people have had their sight tested at one time or another. Imagine looking at an optician’s chart. This has letters displayed in lines. The top line has only one letter, the second line two, the third three and so on. If you can only read the top letter at two metres distance then you have acuity of 2/60. If you can read it at six metres then you have acuity of 6/60.

Next, imagine that you are standing in the middle of a clock face and looking towards 12 o’ clock. If you can only see what exists between half a minute to twelve and half a minute past twelve then you have a field of vision of six degrees. If you can see just more than one and a half minutes to twelve and one and a half minutes past twelve then you have a field of vision of 20 degrees.

Inevitably there is a problem for those who are just on the borderlines of the definitions, and even more so for those just above the international B3 standard. The general view of blind sporting associations is that wherever possible visually impaired players should integrate into normal competition. For judo, all three categories compete together, however in many other sports each category is kept separate.

Staff

The National Coach for the V.I. Squad is Steve Pullen MBE. He was a founder member of the squad and has taken the players to four Paralympic Games so far. The assistant coaches are Clare Lynch and Steve Ravenscroft. Clare has been working with the V.I.s since 1989 and was team manager at the Sydney Paralympics.

Women’s judo will be included for the first time at Athens Paralympics and Great Britain has qualified one place for the event. Steve Ravenscroft has been working with the V.I.s since 1999. He is 5 times British Champion in able-bodied judo and is now finishing a Master’s Degree in Sports Science, which is a very useful contribution to the squad.

Entry to the squad

In order to be considered for the V.I. squad, a potential player must have a visual impairment of B3 or more. Players must have good background knowledge of judo and be a minimum standard of 4th Kyu.

For further information please contact Steve Pullen at steve.pullen@ntlworld.com