Judo - With a favourite that isn't allowed to represent her own country

The sport of Judo was developed by Dr Jigoro Kano in the 19th century as a sport using moves from jiujutsu. The sport was first introduced to the Olympics in the 1964 Tokyo games and the Women's competition was introduced at the 1992 Barcelona games. It's made itself into one of the highlights of the Olympic games for many people and is a highly popular sport with competitors from all over the world competing at the highest level.

The sport is played on a 14m x 14m mat between two competitors. In Judo athletes use an intracate mix of attack and defense moves to take points from their opponents by either throws or holds with different moves giving different points. In London there will be 14 gold medals up for grabs in 7 weight classes for both the Men's and Women's competition. Each weight class will be split into two and is a knock-out competition, with the winners of each group competing for the gold medal. There is one bronze medal awarded to each group with the loosing semi-finalists competing in a rpechage against the loosing quarter-finalists. Each game last for maximum of five minutes and the athlete with the highest score wins, but there are certain moves that give an athlete immediate victory.

Before talking about some of the favourites in this event there is one person that will be dissapointed that she hasn't been allowed to compete for her own nation. Majlinda Kelmendi (KOS) who competes in the Women's under 52kg class has been dreaming about competing for her country of Kosovo since the nation separated from Serbia four years ago. However the IOC has yet to recognize Kosovo as an independent country and therefore they wouldn't allow any athletes to compete for the nation, but Kelmendi applied to be allowed to compete as an independent athlete under the IOC. However if not saying so directly the IOC didn't want to send that kind of political statement and dictated that since Kelmendi has an Albanian passport as well that she should represent Albania in the games. I think it's petty that they won't recognize Kosovo as an independent nation just because Russia is one of the countries heavily opposing it and it's a joke that they aren't allowing athletes from Kosovo to compete as independent athletes when they have done the same thing for athletes form East Timor in the past. The IOC should be ashamed of themselves for the way they are treating these athletes, many who unlike Kelmendi cannot compete for another country in international competitions. The IOC and especially the Olympiics should be free of such power struggles and corruption and athlethes from around the world should be allowed to compete regardless of where they are born. Kelmendi said it herself that she is lucky that she gets to go to the games at all, but feels bad for those that are not allowed to compete on the international stage at all. I hope Kelmendi does well in the games as she is a World Junior Champion and that if she gets on the podium that she wips out Kosovos flag from a pocket.

Other athletes that will make an impression on the 2012 London games are:
- Sarah Menezes (BRZ) Women's -48kg (Bronze at 2010 WC)
- Rishod Sobirov (UZB) Men's -60kg (Bronze at 2008 Beijing games)
- Wang Ki-Chun (KOR) Men's -73kg (Silver at 2008 Beijing games)

The competition in the top level is quite competitive and there's alot of people from many nations that have a chance at the gold medals. It's going to very exciting to see the finals of these games and see who comes up on top, one wrong step could spell defeat for any favourite.