The IJF World Ranking Lists are valuable sources of metrics for researchers. This article includes some simple statistics gained from the 2016 IJF Junior WRL.

These charts can make it easy for interested people to visualise the dispersal of athletes across both weight classes and continental unions.

From this you can easily see that the W-57kg and M-73kg categories are the most popular and that majority of athletes are from the EJU. Comparing Male to Female you can see a difference in the overall shape of the charts. It would appear that the females have a more even distribution of athletes across females with male athletes being skewed towards the lighter weights.

As coaches, researchers or administrators these simple statistics might be useful for decision making processes. For example event organisers might identify the need to attract more heavyweight junior males to participate in events.

The IJF world ranking lists are freely available from the IJF.org website and this site would welcome contributed articles based on investigations into the Cadet, Junior and Senior IJF World Ranking Lists.