YADIS, MYLIE JOY C.

1st Year BSCRIM BAE

The final bout of karate’s historic debut at the Olympics ended in uproar on
Saturday when Saudi Arabian Tareg Hamedi’s high kick to Sajad Ganjzadeh’s neck
saw him disqualified and his motionless Iranian opponent awarded the gold medal.

Hardly a minute in, Hamedi looked dominant, having scored a three-point “ippon”
in the ninth second and he was leading 4-1 before the bout came to an abrupt end.

Hamedi’s final kick sent Ganjzadeh to the tatami and the Saudi into celebration
mode before the mood in the Nippon Budokan arena turned. Medics rushed to
Ganjzadeh’s side, placing an oxygen mask on the Iranian and removing him on a
stretcher.

After a few minutes of discussion among the officials on the sidelines, the referee
called the match for Ganjzadeh by disqualifying Hamedi for an unchecked attack,
which is not allowed under karate’s Olympic rules.

Ganjzadeh returned later for the medal ceremony, walking normally. Both he and
Hamedi were expressionless as they stepped up to the podium and collected their
medals.
They appeared to harbour no hard feelings towards each other, however, as they
hugged and posed for photographs together.

“I’m happy about the gold medal but I’m sad that I had to win it like this,”
Ganjzadeh told a news conference.

Hamedi took the loss in his stride, saying he was unhappy with the judge’s decision
but satisfied with how he fought.

Turkey’s Ugur Aktas and Japan’s Ryutaro Araga took the bronze medals in the
men’s +75kg kumite category.

The women’s gold medal in the +61kg category went to Egypt’s Feryal Abdelaziz,
who won only her country’s second gold medal since 1948 by beating Azerbaijan’s
Iryna Zaretska in the final. Kazakhstan’s Sofya Berultseva and China’s Gong Li
took the bronzes.

Ganjzadeh was the second karate-ka on Saturday to be carried away on a stretcher.

Germany’s gold-medal hopeful Jonathan Horne suffered a mid-bout injury during

the elimination round that left him writhing and screaming in agony and unable to
rise from the tatami.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation press officer Michael Schirp said
Horne had suffered an elbow injury that would be examined further in hospital.

Horne, the reigning world champion in the +84kg class, had 20 seconds left in his
match.

Earlier in the women’s +61kg category contest, Italian Silvia Semeraro’s head was
bandaged up while venue staff replaced the tatami panels stained with her blood.
REFLECTION

Imagine winning your Olympic gold medal in karate just after getting flat out or
knocked unconscious. On the karate final at 75 kilos that just blew our mind, one
competitor lunges forward to throw his shot, his other hand drops, the guy who's
defending leans back throws that high kick and just scores a flat out. Now it looks to us
like they're fighting under sort of karate style point fighting and we can assume the
contact is very minimal because the guy that landed in the head round kick ended up
getting disqualified which means the competitor who is flat on his back and who was
knock out for minutes ends up winning the gold medal talk about a lousy way to win
gold at the Olympics especially in a fight sports competition where you're supposed to
be able to defend yourself. That's a terrible way to achieve a gold medal but even worse
for the guy who ended up getting silver because he was disqualified. Let's say an
opponent in front of you and it's not so much who can do lots of damage over and over.
It's who can score the shot first if you can bounce in and go fake and touch them to the
body before they touch you. You win that point whoever generally at least the way it
used to do. There's probably a different rule set in the Olympics but I have not really
looked because I knew it was going to be really a watered-down version of karate in my
opinion. What the ruleset is there's always champions that are created out of
disqualification and it's just a bummer situation because number one you get knock out
which is never good because we want to protect our brain and we want to come out a
healthy number, two you take a win that wasn't really legitimate and I don't really know
exactly how that would feel but I can really imagine it'd be like kind of winning a fight
when you know you didn't and the opponent did a lot more. You kind of probably feel
guilty about it and don't really like the idea of winning a fight that way. I don't think it
would sit very well with me but at the same time, there is a rule set your opponent did
break the ruleset and it just puts the referees the officials just in a really odd position to
have to award a win to a guy who just got knocked out but again rules are rules. We can
learn in the Olympics is if you throw your head forward and your other hands down
you're very likely going to walk into a kick but I guess under karate rules, you know if
you touch the guy first and then the kick comes up they have to pull it and you feel safe
you feel like you scored the point but really throwing a lead arm to the chest or
something like that is not going to do anything even if you touch them when that head
kick comes up and puts you down. Olympics that sort of pit or powder who can score
more but now they've changed it to a rule set where they're actually scoring it more
based on damage which I think is just so much better and so much more realistic and
that's the important thing that we want in martial arts we want realistic fight styles not
pitter-patter touch stuff which is good for kids but is no good for adults in a real street
fight anyway.