| Annual Meeting of the Refereeing Department and World Grappling Championship |
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| samedi, 19 décembre 2009 | |
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The week-end of 09-13 December 2009 took place under the Florida sunshine with the organization of the annual meeting of the Refereeing Department and of the second World Grappling Championship. The FILA Instructors met under the supervision of the FILA President, Mr. Raphaël Martinetti, the Head of the Department, Mr. Mario Saletnig, and the FILA Bureau Member, Mr. Ik-Jong Kim. They reviewed the work done by the FILA referees in 2009 on the basis of the Intructors' and neutral referees' reports. The referees' categories were updated accordingly and can be consulted on the FILA website. The list of Olympic referees was also updated, taking into consideration the maximum number of 60 and 3 referees per country. The participants in the meeting also decided to host a refreshment course for all Olympic referees and Heads of national referees in order to review the recent changes brought to the Wrestling Rules. The course will take place in Sofia (BUL) on 5-7 February 2010 and the daily accommodation fee is set to CHF 100.  Following the annual meeting of the Refereeing Department, the city of Fort Lauderdale welcomed the second World Grappling Championship in Gi and No-Gi. The competition was masterfully organized by USA Wrestling that sent its staff over and appointed Mr. Pete Isais as competition manager. FILA would like to thank and congratulate him for his great job throughout the Championship. About a hundred participants from 16 countries entered the competition that was held in the Broward County Convention Centre under the eye of an unfortunately almost nonexistent public. That relatively low participation was compensated by the enrolment of 4 American grapplers per category who could confirm the nation's supremacy in No-Gi by winning 11 out of the 13 available gold medals. The two remaining medals went to the French Nicolas Renier in 74kg (2008 silver medallist) and Laurence Fouillat in 55kg (2008 World Champion) who could show their mastery of the discipline. The surprise was created by the American Matt Betzold who, with an amputed leg, managed to beat the 2008 bronze medallist, Brian Peterson, and made his way up to the final where he was only stopped by his teammate Zachary Makovski. To be noted as well the performance of the young Tammi Musumeci who, with only 15, beat the 2008 World Champion, Lisa Ward, and made third in 50kg. As far as the Gi competition is concerned, the medals were more fairly distributed among the countries with 5 gold medals to Brazil, 3 to the United States, and 1 to Switzerland, Canada, France, and Poland. The surprise of the competition came with the 20-year old Swiss grappler, Peter Mettler, who fought the 74kg final with Cole Miller, UFC Fighter from American Top Team, and won by 2-0 after defending a triangle-armlock for almost 3 minutes. In 50kg and 55kg, Felicia Oh and Laurence Fouillat went for their second title leaving no chance to their opponents. The Polish grappler Karolina Zawonik could finally take her revenge over the 2008 World Champion, the French Romy Ruyssen, and get the gold in Gi 67kg. To be noted as well the performance of the Serbian grappler Alekander Rajacic who made third in 74kg Gi, in No-Gi Open and second in Gi-Open. His performance in the Open division was quite remarkable for such a light grappler. FILA would like to also thank Mr. Clint Kingsbury who was appointed as Head referee and brought 5 of the 6 referees present. His work as Instructor must be acknowledged, as no competition can take place without referees properly trained to perform such a hard task. The complete results are available on the grappling website, as well as the footage of the bronze and gold finals.
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