Review on Olympic Taekwondo.
WTF has received feedback from two BBC reporters who commented on Olympic Taekwondo Games in Beijing. A number of recommendations have been made to provide better reception by TV spectators and to help reporters and media people to do their job.
Nick Mullins, BBC Commentator and John Cullen, BBC Co-Commentator have specified the following topics (shortened):
1) Taekwondo games should utilize seeding of athletes so that top athletes will not compete agaonst each other already in the first rounds.
2) Head kicks should be awarded with more points and they should require less power to score.
3) Coaches should have the right to request one video replay per round in case there was no point given to a technique which they consider to have been successful.
4) An additional video referee should be installed who judges techniques from outside and who has the right to award points that have not been given.
5) Difficult techniques like spinning, jumping or multiple kicks should be awarded with points more often.
6) Electronic body armor will be very useful but it has to be sensitive enough to detect multiple kicks and generally it should count points more easily. In the last Asian Games as well as in the European Games in Rome this was not the case and therefore those competitons would not have been good for TV spectators.
7) A 'deduction clock' should be installed to count the seconds of inactivity that will lead to a Kyonggo so competitors will be more active.
8) Referees should have more experience in actual high class competitions, so they should also be invited to games inside Korea before the Olympics, if necessary.
9) Etikette between Referees and coaches has to be improved. Referees should acknowledge more the work of coaches during the competition.
10) Protest management should happen inside a given time frame so that TV stations can plan more exactly for a substitute program during this time.
11) Generally there is much more need for explanation of techniques and all matters around the competition for media people and spectators.
WTF has already made steps into the direction of some of those proposals and we will see how much can be included into future games. Anyway, such feedback from media professionals is very welcome to streamline Taekwondo games and it will lead to many discussions.
