Introduction

Judo is a high-intensity, intermittent combat sport in which many physical characteristics are required to achieve optimal technical-tactical development and competitive success (Bohannon, 2012; Franchini, Artioli, et al., 2013). In official judo competitions, athletes are classified according to sex (male and female), age (U13, U15, U18, U21 and senior) and weight categories. During competitive combats, athletes seek to establish an advantage based on different valid scores (e.g. ippon or wazari) or to induce penalties in opponents (e.g. shido), for this judo athletes use different approaches related to technical-tactical strategies in official competition, involving technical variability (Kons, Agostinho, Santos, et al., 2022; Franchini et al., 2008), groundwork transition strategies (Nagai et al., 2018; Dopico-Calvo et al., 2022) and attack side and direction (Camargo et al., 2019) as an example.
The proportion and variety of techniques used in a judo competition may vary depending on sex, weight categories and competition outcome (Kons, Agostinho, Lopes-Silva, et al., 2022). However, it is important to highlight the successive rule changes that occurred in judo (Franchini, Takito et al., 2013; Samuel et al., 2019) specially in the 2015 and 2018 Judo World Championships (Calmet et al., 2017a, 2017b). In the perceptions of athletes and coaches, these successive rule changes have been negatively identified in the motivation parameters (e.g. participants perceived this change event more negatively with little time to adapt for the official competitions) (Samuel et al., 2019). Considering the investigations related to the effect of this changes in the match-related variables performance, it was verify that while male judo athletes scored slightly increased female judo athletes scored higher (Doppelhammer & Stöckl, 2020). Between the rule changes in 2012 and 2013 European Judo Championships, while the scoring of male and female judokas increased at a similar rate, only male’s hansoku-make and ippon scores increased significantly (Franchini, Takito, et al., 2013).
Senior judo athletes win matches with different scores in different stages in senior judo competitions (Ceylan et al., 2020). According to a study examining the 2018-2019-2021 World Judo Championships in terms of scores and penalties; In the preliminary matches such as elimination and repechage, the majority of the competitions resulted in ippon, while the quarterfinals and subsequent rounds resulted in more waza-ari (Dopico-Calvo et al., 2023). This; It is also supported by a study investigating the sex and standings of the 2011, 2016 and 2017 Grand Slam Paris competitions. Katcips et al. (2018) stated that for the years 2011 and 2017, the match-winning status of especially male medalists was ippon, and for the year 2016, male athletes had a higher shido index. Again, ippon is seen as the key factor determining the winning in the 2016 Rio Olympic and Paralympic judo games (Kons et al., 2018). In contrast, it was investigated that 6 out of 10 competitions concluded with a shido score (Escobar-Molina et al., 2014).
Examining more than one competition in judo according to scores, sex or weight category variables is mostly due to the rule change made by the International Judo Federation (Barreto et al., 2022a; 2022b; Calmet et al., 2017a, 2017b; Ceylan & Balcı, 2017; Doppelhammer & Stöckl, 2020; Franchini et al., 2019; Katicips et al., 2018). In addition, in the event of an epidemic crisis, the deficiencies of the study in which Judo competitions were examined according to various variables attracted attention. Therefore, The main hypotheses of this study are that the match scores of the athletes who experience a decrease in training due to the quarantine will change, and will also change in sex and weight categories. Due to the Covid-19 quarantine seen in all countries of the world, it is thought that the cancellation of important competitions in the 2020 match calendar and carrying points to the Olympics, and the return of the athletes to the matches, changes in the scores and technical-tactical components in the competition.
Research aim. To examine match-related performances (e.g. scores and penalties) of athletes in the Junior EJC (European Judo Championships) and U23 EJC categories by gender and weight category groups before and immediately after Covid-19 quarantine.