British Judo Partner with JudoData

Over the past 12 months, British Judo has been working closely with JudoData – a performance analysis system.

JudoData is a comprehensive video and data analysis system that tracks the world’s best Judo athletes on the IJF World Tour, which is ‘tagged’ to build an incredibly detailed database that can be used to profile our athletes, track our technical trademarks to inform technical progress and analyse the opposition.

British Judo is now pleased to announce that we have entered a partnership with JudoData for the Paris cycle, which will provide an opportunity for our GB Judo coaching team to gain access to the JudoData system. Additionally, our Performance Analyst-Technical Coach, Chris Barry, will have full access to the comprehensive data, to enable the detailed analysis of GB athletes and the development of opponent profiles to support the coaching process.

Performance Director, Nigel Donohue is very excited by the new partnership: “It is exciting to be able to enter into a partnership with JudoData and its founder, Emidio Centracchio, an extremely knowledgeable and professional Judo Performance Analyst who has designed and built a ground-breaking analytical system specifically for Judo. Personally, I have a real interest in utilising evidence-based data to drive performance and the JudoData system will give us an extra edge in the development of our fighters as we prepare to qualify and optimise the performance of the team in Paris 2024. In trialling the system over the past few months, we believe that the JudoData system has given us a greater insight into our opposition at the recent European Championships that supported us in achieving some of our best results for some 16 years. I have no doubt that the partnership with Emidio and the JudoData system will add value to our coaching team to support our aspirations for Paris Olympic success.”

Performance Analyst Technical Coach, Chris Barry: “JudoData provides us with an unprecedented level of performance data on Judo from the IJF World Tour. The opportunity to analyse, in greater depth, across more athletes and without the processing time required to produce this data is one we could not afford to pass up. From my own perspective, it frees me up to spend more time discussing with our coaches and athletes about their performance, or that of their opponents. This is where the real analysis work is done and can be the difference between winning and losing, medalling or missing out, gold or silver medals. Emidio has been great to work with and very receptive to our feedback and suggestions for future analysis options. As Nigel mentioned, the impact of this has already been felt with a successful piece of opponent analysis at the recent European Championships helping to deliver two gold medals for Great Britain. I’m looking forward to seeing what other vital insights we can make as we progress through to Paris 2024 Olympics and beyond.”

JudoData founder, Emidio Centracchio: “The bond that exists between JudoData and British Judo has deep roots, which began a long time ago when a young me found himself talking about his dream with two coaches of the British Judo Junior Team who were in Lignano Sabbiadoro for a Trainig Camp: Nigel Donohue and Jamie Johnson. Since then, many things have happened and there have been other moments of sharing, the live analysis made during the 2015 World Championships in Astana is unforgettable. There I met Chris Barry, another person I respect very much. Today I am honoured to see this partnership between JudoData and British Judo. In recent months I have had the opportunity to interact with an extremely competent and prepared coaching team, already accustomed to the use of certain technologies and methods of analysis. This has greatly enhanced me, and I am delighted that JudoData can provide further value to an already high-level team.”

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