The insanity principle

Albert Einstein is credited with saying that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

Malaysian judo has been stuck in a rut for nearly four decades, failing to produce a single gold medal at the SEA Games in all this time. Most recently, we sent only a single athlete to the Asian Games who crashed out in the first round.

We can analyze the situation to death and come up with a million reasons why Malaysian judo is in such a dire state but it fundamentally boils down to two things:

i) We don't have a system for players to train properly after high school
ii) Malaysian judo is fragmented with top athletes scattered throughout the country (and no centre of excellence for them to congregate and train together)

Until and unless these two items are addressed, nothing's going to change. There's always talk of importing a foreign coach from Japan or South Korea or Mongolia. But you can have the best coaches in the world and still not produce any results if he doesn't have the players to work with in the first place. And, until (i) and (ii) are resolved, there will never be a critical mass of players to train up.

Secondly, somebody should inform the powers-that-be in Malaysian judo that our judo demographic isn't exactly like Japan, Korea or Mongolia. There are hardly any judo players here. Instead of looking at how the Japanese, Koreans and Mongolians (all of which have big judo programs and plenty of players) do it, we should be looking at how countries with a small judo population do it. I'm talking about the likes of Kosovo, Slovenia and Israel, which have managed to produce world class players (yes, World and Olympic champions and medalists) despite not having a lot of judo players to work with in the first place.

It's even worth looking at how former US Olympic coach Jimmy Pedro did it with his players. MMA and BJJ might be popular in the US but judo is not. And it's really fragmented there with three competing governing bodies for judo (only one, USA Judo, is recognized by the IJF). Yet, despite all that, Pedro was able to produce World and Olympic champions (he himself is a World champion). He didn't do it by trying to copy the Japanese or the French. Those are countries with huge judo populations.

When you're working with a small judo population (and in Malaysia, we are talking about an absolutely tiny judo demographic), you need to think out of the box. Stop doing the same old thing, stop trying to copy the Japanese. Think about resolving issues (i) and (ii) and then maybe we might have a chance at building up champions.