When the ‘Milli Gymnastika Arenasi’ opened its doors this morning to welcome the 758 competitors – 460 men & 298 women – from 125 countries, the people making it all happen were already on the spot at the break of dawn. Photographers getting their bibs, cameramen checking their camera positions for the umpteenth time. Referees walking in, taking their positions on and off the tatami. Tech people running around to solve that sudden problem … Murphy’s Law … no doubt about it.
Then the busses arrive, and athletes swarm the venue getting ready for their first round …
In the meanwhile, the timer clock is silently blinking the minutes and seconds away on the giant video screen. The announcer scrapes his voice one more time and puts that extra pressure on by reminding everybody … 20 minutes to go, 10, 5, … and then … Show time!
A pressure cooker? “Actually, it’s quiet calm when the last minutes count down before the kick-off,” admits IJF Competition Manager Lisa Allan. “We have a process at the start of the day that everybody follows. And everybody from each department reports in to tell everything is good or if there is this or that issue. We always make sure we come early enough to solve things, because we know from the evening before that everything is ready to start the competition.”
So OK, no worries then? “Well, we’re always a bit concerned the athletes are on time because we cannot control them coming through the gate. But yes, quiet calm. Although I admit there are always a bit of butterflies in the tummy because it’s the first day of the Championship and we gonna see two brand new World Champions by the end of the day. However, fully confident in our team that we work together and did the best preparation we could,” says the Competition Manager.
Everybody’s heartbeat settles down once the first thirty minutes have passed. “Afterwards it just runs and then each day, because the next day is almost a repetition of the previous day. It flows,” says Lisa Allan.
The qualities of a good Competition Manager is to be able to lead a team. “I think it’s important that you have the right members in the team while it is imperative that you listen to your people. And we listen to all of our client groups. To our athletes, coaches, referees, media, sponsors and guests while we try to provide the best service we can for each of these client groups.”
Judo is amazingly flexible opinions the Competition Manager. “And sure, we have to have a standard, a service level for every client group. We would never drop below a certain level. But I like to think that our client groups know us well enough to come to us, report any issues and we immediately try our best to solve any issue. But as I said judo is extremely flexible. And we get very few complaints that are not justified. It must be the nature of judo. Everybody in judo respects each other. The athletes and delegations respect the jobs that the IJF Team do. They know that everybody here is working hard. Nobody is here just sitting doing nothing. They know that we’re always trying to help them. And we always try to improve, which is also a part of the judo philosophy. Generally, we work all well together.”