Envic Galea, Chair of the IJF Academy, accompanied by Dr Tibor Kozsla, Head of Institutions of the IJF Academy, said, "We had important meetings with the federation to follow up on the announcement made by the IJF President, Mr Marius Vizer, regarding the establishment of an IJF Academy structure in Uzbekistan. The meeting with the president of the federation, Azizjon Kamilov, and his team, proved to be very productive. We signed an agreement with the president, allowing them to begin translating our content into the Uzbek language."
The federation can already count on the strong support of Dr Adkham Ikramov, Minister of Sport of Uzbekistan, and Dr Oybek Kasimov, National Olympic Committee Secretary General.
Several points were discussed during the meeting with President Kamilov and his team. Beside the setting of the regional IJF Academy, Envic Galea and Dr Tibor Kozsla could collect important data that will help to build the project. So far, Uzbekistan can count on 14 regions, 30,000 judoka, 940 registered coaches, nine IJF Academy Undergraduate Certificate as Judo Instructor (UCJI) alumni among them.
Artyom Bagdasarov, an IJF Academy alumnus himself, was therefore appointed as the co-ordinator of the IJF Academy Uzbekistan project and the Paris Olympic gold medallist, Diyora Keldiyorova, will begin the IJF Academy UCJI course and will be helping in this project.
It was already announced that kata will be introduced as part of the national education programme and that Uzbek universities will also be targeted for further education programmes for judo coaches.
Envic Galea concluded, "The meetings were very productive and bodes well for the already very successful promotion of judo in Uzbekistan. There will be further visits to follow."