The Councillor for Social Affairs and Sports, Fina Santiago, and the Director General of Sports, Carles Gonyalons, have visited one of the first training sessions of the new Judo Sports Technification Programme, which has been underway since September. They were accompanied by the manager of the Fundació per a l’Esport Balear, Pere Joan March, and the president of the Balearic Judo Federation, Miquel Àngel Bisquerra.

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The Centro de Tecnificación Deportiva Islas Baleares is already hosting these sessions, with eight athletes (half of whom are girls) aged between 14 and 19. The group will hold 10 sessions a week aimed at improving sporting technique and preparing and guiding the athletes for competition and their all-around development. These sessions are combined with the athletes’ academic studies.

In addition, the programme enables the best sportsmen and women in the Balearic Islands to work in groups and reinforces the practical sessions with theoretical sessions and talks on nutritional information appropriate to the sport. The aim of all this is to continue with the good results of the Balearic athletes in the Spanish championships in the coming years, an essential step in order to be called up to the national team and thus participate in the European and World Championships.

It should also be borne in mind that the athletes do not lose their relationship with their previous coach, as the technical staff of the Programme maintains continuous communication to assess the student’s situation.

New programme
Last June, the Department of Social Affairs and Sports incorporated judo into the Fundació per a l’Esport Balear as a new Sports Technification Programme for a Contact Sport. The trajectory, results and structure of the Federation together with its clubs and athletes fully supported the incorporation of this discipline into the Sports Technification Programme of the Balearic Islands.

Thus, it was considered that judo presented the best conditions in the regional and national context (with enough national structure and guarantees both in terms of training and trainers) to be able to implement a sports technification programme and project the participating athletes towards higher stages, such as high performance and the Olympic Programme.

Judo is the contact sport with the highest number of licences at state level, far ahead of the others. This figure is a value directly proportional to the implantation of each sport in the social fabric and gives greater weight to sporting successes in national and international competitions. Another consideration is that it develops technification programmes at federative level and is the one with the highest number of qualified coaches at national level with the highest qualification.