“For me, it seems like a simple story but maybe it isn’t! I started judo when I was 14. As a judoka, I was not so good but I liked it very much. I did it at school and continuously from then. When I was 18 I went to university and I wasn’t so talented academically either but I decided it was more important for me to study and to learn.
After university, I had quite a big accident and injured my knee, at judo. I decided to concentrate therefore on my job and became an economist. I kept judo as a hobby, albeit a huge one. I stopped competing completely after some years and became a sports official and then progressed to becoming my club’s technical director."
"My club then suggested that I was well suited to refereeing and so I began. It was like starting a new judo career. Jumping forward a bit, I was nominated for my IJF B, as it was called then, in 1981 and then I went for me IJF A in 1985. I refereed at the Essen worlds in 1987 as my first high level event. I then refereed many senior European and world championships and of course the next step was the Olympics. I refereed in both Atlanta and Sydney but while in Australia I decided then to end my Olympic refereeing career."
"In Hungary, where I live, I had a lot of refereeing students and I knew they could go to the highest level and so I wanted to concentrate on supporting their development. At the same time, I was appointed CEO in my work life. It all came together to form the structure of my life at that time.
In 2002 a friend in the Hungarian Judo Association asked me to help them develop the VI judo programme in Hungary. There were only 1 or two competitions around the world each year for VI judoka back then. We worked very fast and could move Para Judo forward very fast. So, I went to Athens as a Paralympic referee and was then in Beijing in 2008 as a Paralympic referee supervisor. I stopped refereeing completely after that and became President of the Hungarian Blind Sports Association.
I went to the London Games as an official. Norbert Biro was elected as IBSA Judo Chair a year later and he elected me as the sport director. I was the technical delegate in Brazil and in Tokyo. After Tokyo I discussed things with Norbert and was then elected as the new Chair of IBSA Judo, re-elected after Paris."
"Before my time there was no blind sport in Hungary at all. We created the history. I could feel the difference between blind athletes and blind people who were not in sport. Blind people need safety and must construct their lives to know everything around them. Sport is a great tool to pull people out of their perceived safe spaces and help them make contact with society. Blind sport has two functions, not just competitive judo but to give people a chance to fully integrate with society. Perhaps in this way, judo is even more important for the visually impaired than for sighted athletes.”
This final statement is perhaps the most important of all and links perfectly with Jigoro Kano Shihan’s philosophy. The athletes competing under the banner of IBSA Judo have already worked incredibly hard to access the sport at all but have gone on to improve themselves and develop and that leads to incredible cohesion in society, inspiring further tolerance, understanding and diversity in a sport which accomplishes so much in these areas. From nationality to physical capability, from language to gender, judo continues to be the most universal arena for self-improvement and excellence; Janos Tardos’ life in judo is another illustration of that.