"Barbara's gold medal this summer was really exciting. We had been expecting this for many years and we knew it was possible, but until it happens you never know. Now that she has won, we still don't really realise what she achieved. This is exceptional. It's really a great moment for Croatian judo.
Barbara is a role model, not only in sport but as a person and thanks to her we can attract a new generation of judoka and also new sponsors to help with the development of the sport. Everything connects together with her result. It's a new era for judo in our country and that's more than a culmination, it is the starting point of something bigger that awaits us.
Paradoxically, her gold medal also helps us to analyse what worked and what needs to be adapted and changed in order to keep getting international results. We don't think that it's the end of the story, it is the beginning actually.
We know that we need more judo clubs in Croatia and that we need to help them to be more structured, more effective. We are lacking infrastructure at the national and the local level. We need to work on coach education too. For that we have the chance to have the IJF Academy input but we need more to go even further.
Today, we have several girls who have the potential to perform in LA28 for instance, and here on the occasion of this grand prix, for the first time, we have the potential of winning medals every day. With Barbara, the motivation has risen a notch.
That development is my mission for the next four years. We need to create opportunities for our judoka. If they want to go to train abroad, in Japan for instance, we need to make sure they can. We set the bar high. We don't have the complex of being a small country any more. Barbara proved that we are not, we can win and we will win. Before we could have said that it was not possible, but now we say it is!
I am happy that this Zagreb Grand Prix 2024 is the first of a new long series of events. It is always good to have a starting point and having it here in Croatia is even better. It offers chances to our young athletes to get experience. We will keep organising events at the continental and global level in the future."
Dr Sanda Corak is also an IJF Executive Committee member, chair of the Gender Equality Commission and editor of the Scientific Journal 'The Arts and Sciences of Judo.’ Thus her vision goes beyond the border of Croatia. "Concerning gender equality, we are moving forward and I am happy about it. I am proud to say that we now have 20 national federation presidents who are women and one continental union president, Kate Corkery in Oceania. This is not enough though and that is why we are working to determine what the main obstacles are for women to get to leadership positions and improve their presence in the management of the sport.
One can see it everyday, the number of female athletes is increasing and many countries that did not really have judo for women are now reaching the top spot of the sport. This needs to be visible in the management sector as well.
Another subject that interests me a lot is the values. We talk a lot about the judo values and we need to make sure that everyone understands what that means and how they can use our values on and off the tatami. We have to find ways to implement them and find new methods of education to help the coaches and their judoka to live through the judo philosophy.
Last but not least, the sustainability dimension of judo is also a main subject of interest and it is intimately linked with the other subjects. The Zagreb Grand Prix has been following strict sustainability procedures for several years. At this 2024 edition we gave a questionnaire to all the heads of delegation to find new ideas to reduce our carbon footprint. It's again a matter of education. Some may say that individually we don't have an impact. I believe the opposite. With all our individual efforts we can change things. Look at the size of the judo community worldwide. If everyone of us does something, even small things, the impact will be massive. A few years ago, we launched the Plant a Tree campaign on the occasion of World Judo Day. We should plant trees everyday. With the 2024 theme, 'Wellbeing,’ we have the chance to connect all the dots again and make a social change."
To change society or maybe to help society change for a better world, this was Jigoro Kano's dream. Locally in Croatia or internationally, Dr Sanda Corak knows that Barbara Matic's title at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is only the beginning of something that goes beyond the boundaries of sport. This is a new start!