The first meeting on the Olympic Results and Information Services (ORIS) Requirements Project for the sport of taekwondo at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was held at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Montreux, Switzerland, on November 21-24, 2005.

The meeting would serve as a platform for the successful organization of taekwondo competitions in general, in particular at the Olympic Games. The first two days of the meeting was to familiarize representatives with one another, and keep them up-to-date with the advancements in the ORIS technology since Athens 2004, as well as with the amendments to the Competition Rules of the WTF. The final two days of the meeting dealt primarily with the technical requirements for and competition management of taekwondo at the Olympic Games.

Representatives from the World Taekwondo Federation, the International Olympic Committee ORIS Project Office, the Organizing Committee for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and other associated organizations like Omega and Atos-Origin were involved in the four-day meeting.

Boris Sakač, project director from Croatia, chaired the meeting, along with assistance from Gorka Golec, project technical editor from Croatia; and Ketil Pettersen, sport analyst for taekwondo from Norway.

The WTF was represented by Dong-Hoo Moon, secretary general of the WTF; Rene Bundeli, executive council member and chairman of the WTF Games Committee from Switzerland; Eui Min Ko, chairman of the WTF Technical Committee from Germany; and Jerry Ling, WTF coordinator for the ORIS project from Singapore.

The BOCOG representatives included Zhou Zongxin, senior project consultant; Cao Tao, competition manager for taekwondo at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games; and Zhang Xu, project assistant.

Guillermo Martinez, project manager for Omega; and David Quesada, sport business analyst for Atos-Origin, where in-depth technical discussions were made between them and BOCOG. Among the agenda was the possible introduction of more advanced electronic scoreboards, such as those with LCD screens for superior presentation of information, as well as improvements to the scoring devices for judges.

Since the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the WTF has been heavily involved in its reform efforts to enhance the operations and international standing of the sport and organization. For example, a two-minute sudden death round has been introduced to all competition matches to decide a winner in the event of a tie; in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, it was only implemented for the final match.

At the end of the meeting, Sakač thanked all participants for their “good preparations, constructive and efficient” efforts. For his part, Secretary General Moon expressed his desire to use the model set out by the ORIS team for future preparations of taekwondo events, especially at the Olympic Games.

The next step for the ORIS project will be the review and possible amendments to the documentation, after which all concerned parties will secure their commitments and sign off the final version on March 15, 2006.