To make matters worse, sometimes there are players with exactly the same names and it takes a bit of investigative work to figure out which results belong to whom.
“Recently I spoke with Ekaterina Tokareva of Russia, and experts know this: there are two of them, in the same weight and they differ in age by just a year or so,” says Hans. The younger one was the more successful, and she was the one he spoke to. “She helped to clarify which were her results on the spot at an event.” She’s not an isolated case. Apparently there are three players with the name Magomed Magomedov. Imagine the headache Hans gets with that one.
Although Hans keeps track of all major judo events he doesn’t actually travel to many of them as he can monitor them all from the comforts of his home. But he does still make a point to travel to some events – about one per month, mostly in Europe – just to catch up with judo people and do some networking.
At home, he monitors live video streams and live result updates from judo federation websites and International Judo Federation resources. He also checks social media pages and he keeps in regular contact with his many judo photographer friends, who travel to far more competitions than he does.
A typical day for this judo insider involves downloading and uploading pictures, embedding video clips, monitoring and picking up news, and updating the ever-growing results list.
He spends a lot of time on e-mails, communicating with people all over the judo world and especially with his programmer. He’s always trying to add new features and functionality to JudoInside.com, the latest of which is a judo management game for IJF World Tour events.
None of his work for JudoInside makes money for him directly. His main occupation is selling football data to media companies in the Benelux region for Opta Sports, a British sports data company.
by Oon Yeoh
b
by Oon Yeoh
Story + Q&A
JUDO
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