Følgende meddelse er netop modtaget fra arrangørerne af Swedish Open 2007:
Dear Swedish Open participants,
Due to a series of incidents outside of the organiser's control we regret to have to inform you that this year's tournament Swedish Open 2007, unfortunately has to be cancelled. Our functionaries have already spent hundreds of hours of preparation on it but as we feel that we cannot guarantee a satisfactory tournament we feel obliged to call it off.
We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause but unfortunately, this is the only course of action open to us at this point.
The tournament in Helsingborg, Sweden on September 8-9 is cancelled!
Mike Wall
Chief organiser Swedish Open 2007-08-29
Robin Thursfield
Kaisho Martial Arts Academy
http://www.swedishopen.nu
Dear jujutsuka,
It is with great sadness that we must inform you that Swedish Open 2007 has been cancelled. We feel that we owe the people who have been looking forward to this tournament an explanation as to why it will not come to pass. As organisers we have worked hard and spent much time on implementing various improvements from last year's tournament; amongst other things we have separated the junior and senior tournaments so the juniors would not have to compete too late in the day. We have separated the registration to try to cut the waiting time and make the event run as smoothly and quickly as possible. We have also travelled to Turin to market the tournament to as many people as possible in the international jujutsu community.
There are several factors outside of our control that have contributed to our being forced to take this decision. Our goal was to organise a first rate international tournament with many contestants from different countries, a tournament that could serve as a barometer for the World and European Championships for both juniors and seniors. We had organised the tournament in accordance with international regulations but were later informed by the Swedish Martial Arts Delegation that the weight classes we had planned to use would not be permitted under Swedish rules. We then faced the choice of either going through with a tournament that would be illegal in Sweden or one that would not be internationally recognised. In other words: had we chosen the former alternative we would have broken Swedish law, had we chosen the latter, the contestants would not have been able to utilise their scores on an international level. Furthermore, we had anticipated a big event with many contestants which would have required many referees; unfortunately, we were not given as many referees as we had expected and with less and less time left, the situation was becoming untenable.
Above all we wanted our tournament to hold a very high standard and under the original circumstances we thought that this would be possible to do. But as there were disagreements that we were not sure of how to solve before it would be too late, we felt pressed to take the decision to cancel. We did not want to wait any longer as it would then have been impossible for those who had already booked this event to alter their plans. By announcing it already today, Wednesday August 29, we are giving all concerned parties a reasonable amount of time to reschedule, had we held out until next week this would not have been possible.
Again we apologise for what has happened and we hope that we have given a satisfactory explanation. We would like to thank everyone who has registered: the referees, the functionaries and above all the contestants. Thank you to all who have expended time and energy on organising this tournament.
We hope that this will not deter anyone from registering for future events but that we will see you all soon again under more felicitous circumstances!
Best regards
Mike Wall
Chief organiser Swedish Open 2007
Robin Thursfield & Mats Nilsson
Kaisho Martial Arts Academy