Venue: Hershey Centre, 5500 Rose Cherry Place, Mississauga, Canada

Events: Kata (choice of six katas) Individual '7' I.J.F. weight categories and OPEN (in age divisions) Men and Women Teams (Men, Women)

Features: Minimum age 30 years on 22nd June, 2005 Age divisions for every 5 years.

Congratulations Mark on your gold medal performance! The following is a brief account of the Tournament by Mark.

This tournament has grown exponentially since I competed in 2001. It is very big now. Estimates were between 1000 to 1200 competitors. When I walked into the Hersey Centre on Thursday, it's an ice rink venue, there were four full size international mat areas. The entire mat surface was jammed packed with judoka. Same thing on Friday and Saturday.

The females in their 30's and the men in their 50's and above fought on Thursday. Men in their 40's on Friday and men in their 30's on Saturday. Sunday was Open weights and team competitions. I am hoping that the web site will update results and final figures for the size of the teams from each country. Brazil, Germany, Italy, England and Russia had large teams. Japan, France, Nederland, USA, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Wales, New Zealand, Romania, Ukraine and many more were in attendance.

The divisions in the 30's and 40's age groups was highly competitive and at least national calibre or better (mostly better). If you are in your thirties or early forties I would strongly recommend you train for at least 1 year or you will be destroyed. Above 45 years of age the divisions drop in numbers.

BC was represented by 5 competitors. 3 from Abbotsford (Brian, George Jobb and Gerry Hughes), myself, Jeff DiMarco from Williams Lake. Unfortunately, we didn't do that well. George lost in the bronze medal match and I won gold in my division. The others did not place. Canada won a few at least two other gold medals. Roberto Mesiano was our "unofficial" coach.