Kicking it, Canadian-style
You thought hockey was Canada's sport? Think again: this country was made for karate
John Robson - September 19, 2005
What could be more Canadian than a karate chop? Asked to name a sport where punches are thrown, some people in this country might dimly remember something called pro hockey. But martial arts are increasingly popular here, for their health, psychological and social benefits. It is odd that karate gets so little press or government attention.
Let some Canadian rank 94th in international tennis and a horde of politicians seek a share of the glory. Let a Canadian show Olympic promise in trampoline and dozens of TV cameras converge. But in May, two leading sport karate federations, the International Amateur Kickboxing Sport Association (IAKSA) and the World Karate Association (WKA), held their joint Canadian championship at the Palais des Congr?s in Gatineau, Que. And not even the victory of Canadian figure-skating icon Elvis Stojko in a "kata" (solo formal display) category brought press attention. This is particularly odd since IAKSA and the WKA are also combining their world championship competitions this November in Canada, and expecting more than 40 countries to send over 2,000 athletes as part of an ongoing bid to make karate an Olympic sport.
If it succeeds, Canadians are likely to win some of those elusive gold medals whose absence, every four years, prompts an agonized bout of navel-gazing. At the 1996 WKA championships in Prague, Canadian adults won more gold medals than any other nation, while the juniors tied for most golds but won most medals overall. In 1997, our adults came first, our juniors second, for a combined second behind England. In 1998, Canadians won the most golds, including two for Ottawa's Domenic Aversa. Same in 1999, including one for Aversa and one for his brother Fortunato. In 2000, 2001 and 2002, Canada came first; in 2003, second to England, and; in 2004, first again. In IAKSA, the association's Canada president, John Douvris of Ottawa, says, "we're the number one team in the world and have been since 1996," adding that if karate becomes an Olympic sport, Canada will "be right up there."
True, these two federations are overwhelmingly European and North American. And there is another major world federation, the World Karate Federation, associated closely with the Japanese Karate Federation, whose Asian branch is by far its largest and which has some claim to be the most rigorous in terms of its links to the sport's Japanese origins and its international competition standards. According to the WKA website, no Canadian has ever won a gold medal in their world championships in the past 35 years, and a recent bronze was our first medal of any sort in nearly 20 years. Sebastian Pirrone, president of WKF affiliate Karate Canada, says one reason is that the Canadian government is not nearly as committed to funding the sport as other nations, including France. (He adds, however, that Canadian results are considerably better in the WKF-affiliated Panamerican Karate Federation competitions.)
One reason that karate may have not managed to get the attention and recognition that Canadian fans and followers insist is appropriate, given its growing prominence, is the immature and amateur image of the sport. There are competing federations, with sometimes less than entirely polished tournaments and websites, as well as a slightly suspect proliferation of "world" titles.
And if a Canadian Olympic karate team ever does end up assembled, there's also some dispute over who would actually organize it--although, as Pirrone notes, the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) has long recognized the World Karate Federation as "the designated representative body for karate in the world." That gives it the inside track to recognition by the International Olympic Committee. But judging by how well Canadians do in WKA and IAKSA events, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, whoever assembles it, a Canadian Olympic team would be extremely formidable. In July, a Canadian woman won two gold medals at the international Maccabiah Games in Israel.
To call karate Canada's sport might be a bit exaggerated. As of 1998, Sport Canada estimates, 8.3-million Canadians over 15 participated regularly in one or more sports and 4.6 million belonged to an amateur sport club or association, the most popular being golf, hockey, baseball and swimming. Meanwhile, Pirrone estimates between 55,000 and 80,000 Canadians do karate, about 15,000 in Karate Canada-member dojos (karate studios). But there are also tae kwon do, kung fu (Elvis Stojko's discipline) and other less well-known styles that rely primarily on blocks and strikes, to say nothing of judo, ju jitsu and similar grappling-and-throwing martial arts. A quick count in the Calgary Yellow Pages by Dave Kvapil (who won gold in Gatineau and will represent Canada in Niagara Falls in the men's 67-kilogram-and-under continuous fighting category) shows 15 karate schools and 62 martial arts clubs total. And there are other ways of considering the matter.
First, karate and associated activities are clearly on the upswing. Who doesn't at least know someone who takes part in a once Asian martial art? Yet as recently as 1959, Ian Fleming could have Auric Goldfinger ask James Bond, "Have you ever heard of karate? No?" Then explain that Oddjob "is one of the three in the world who have achieved the black belt in karate" and western readers didn't blink. By 1995, even Hercules had one, judging by Kevin Sorbo's TV series. Bruce Lee, as Cato in the late 1960s TV series The Green Hornet, first introduced North Americans to martial arts as something cool and had to persuade reluctant producers to let him stage the sorts of spectacular fight scenes without which an audience would now go home. Yet in his 1972 feature, Return of the Dragon, just a year before his breakthrough Enter the Dragon (the first major North American-made martial arts movie), "kung fu" is translated as "Chinese boxing." Today it would be as hard to convince a small child in this country that only three people worldwide held black belts in karate in 1959, as that there ever was such a thing as Chinese boxing.
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