Dennis Penfold, 1931-2024: Seventy-Six Years of Judo
He began judo in 1948 and never stopped — seventy-six years on the mat. But his real contribution was insisting that coaching is a skill that has to be taught, at a time when British judo assumed a good competitor made a good coach.
- Born
- c. 1931
- Died
- Early November 2024, age 93
- Rank
- 8th dan
- Began judo
- 1948; first dan March 1952
- Roles
- Kata judge for the European Judo Union and the International Judo Federation
Dennis Penfold took a European silver medal in 1963 and went on to become a kata judge at both European and international level. He coached at Fort Purbrook Judo Club in Portsmouth with his wife Tina, and in 2017 the couple received the British Judo Association’s President’s Award.
The British Judo Association’s chair put the substantive claim plainly: together with Geoff Gleeson, he was “an early pioneer of coach education in Britain.”
What a school owner should take from Dennis Penfold
Coach education is the discipline of treating teaching as a separate skill from doing — with its own curriculum, its own assessment, and its own qualification. Judo in Britain has had that for decades. Most of the commercial martial arts industry still does not.
The practical consequence sits in every school with more than one instructor. If your assistant instructors were promoted because they were good students, you have staffed your floor on the assumption Penfold spent his life arguing against. Ask what training your instructors have had in instructing, as opposed to in the art. For most owners the honest answer is none.
Sources, and what we could not confirm
- No exact date of death has been published. The International Judo Federation, European Judo Union and British Judo Association all announced it on 5 November 2024, which is an announcement date rather than a death date. We have written “early November 2024.”
- Cause of death was not reported.
- Principal sources: the International Judo Federation and British Judo Association obituaries.
Corrections and first-hand recollections are welcome and will be added with attribution.