Glasgow loses European judo championships

Glasgow has been stripped of the right to host the European Judo Championships, just eight weeks before the scheduled start of the event.
The European Judo Union (EJU) took the decision after a disagreement over the British Judo Association's (BJA) partnership with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to promote and support the event, the BJA said on Saturday.
But they still hope to reach agreement to host the event from April 9-12, they said.
Chief executive Andrew Scoular said: "Following discussions with the EJU we had cancelled the agreement with UFC to ensure we could still host the Championships.
"We are extremely disappointed to have had the European Judo Championships taken away from us in this way and for this reason, and so following the communication with the EJU on Friday evening (in which that was confirmed) we have asked to meet in the hope the decision can be reversed to allow us to still deliver the event as planned."
The EJU said that, as well as the partnership with UFC, the BJA had breached the contract by missing the agreed deadline to pay the event license fee.
A statement said: "The European Judo Union has come to the realisation that the British Judo Association does not fit the EJU criteria to host the EJU flagship event.
"The BJA had entered into a sponsorship agreement which did not meet the EJU values. BJA persisted in this, notwithstanding that it had been warned on a number of occasions that this arrangement was unacceptable to the EJU, which has a right under the event contract to approve or disapprove any sponsorships of EJU events.
"In their several e-mails and telephone conversations the BJA referred to a loss of funding. In addition, the BJA missed the agreed deadline to pay the event license fee, which is also a breach of contract.
"Taking all of the above into consideration, and given the limited time to the staging of the European Championships...(the) EJU executive committee have unanimously taken the decision to withdraw the event from Glasgow and designate as quickly as possible an alternative host who is willing and able to stage these continental judo championships."
Source: AFP