So the first annual Sport Accord Combat Games seemed to come off fairly well and I look forward to next year’s events. First, some notes from the sportaccord.com website:
“…the competition will showcase 13 Martial Arts and Combat sports, both Olympic and non-Olympic. The event will also include a Cultural Program that will reflect the social and cultural values of these sports and Combat Games as a whole.”
The site goes on to list the arts, beginning of course with Chinese wushu, then adding wrestling, sumo, karate, judo, jujutsu (why both were included I am not sure – maybe to separate the judo we can see in the Olympics from the more recently developed Brazilian Jujutsu?), boxing, kick boxing, Muay Thai (again, why were these two separated?), Tae Kwan Do, kendo, aikido, and sambo.
Unfortunately I was only able to attend the kendo events, two very long and satisfying days of competition and demonstration.
I am sure the arena was packed for wushu but kendo is much less known in China. And the kendo events were on the final two days of the week. The stadium (Beijing Science and Technology Gymnasium) was fairly full, largely due to the masses of students who attended (class outings?).
Everyone in the audience was given a little flappy fan (nice in the late summer heat, but needed to be more sturdy) with the logos of the various arts on one side (see picture) and a guide to being a good / polite audience on the other.
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