2024–25 WKF Kata Analysis

Welcome!

This site presents a statistical analysis of all kata performances recorded during the nine Tier 1 tournaments in the 2024–25 WKF season, covering both the Male and Female Kata categories.

If you are unfamiliar with kata competition, see "Kata Competition Basics" below for a brief breakdown.

2024–25 Season Timeline

Click any tournament to explore its results.

Kata Competition Basics Click to open.

Two athletes compete in a head-to-head match. One performs their kata first, then the next athlete performs. Each judge on a panel of seven assigns a score from 0–10. The highest and lowest scores are discarded; the remaining five are averaged to produce the final score. Refer to the linked YouTube video at the bottom of the Home page for an example.

At Tier 1 tournaments, athletes are split into eight groups of four competitors each (if there are fewer than 32 total competitors, certain groups will have only three athletes). Each group runs a round robin between all competitors, and the athlete with the most wins advances to the bracket stage. In the bracket stage, the eight group winners are placed into an 8-person single-elimination bracket and compete in three rounds until the bracket concludes. After the bracket concludes, two repechage ("second-chance") matches are held: athletes who were eliminated earlier by the two finalists get another chance and compete for the two bronze medals (4 athletes total).

At the World Championships, the top two athletes from each group progressed to the bracket stage, resulting in a 16-person single-elimination bracket.

How to Use This Site

Functionalities

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Navigating the Site

The top bar groups tabs into three drop-down menus — Data, Analysis, and Info (hover or click the ▾ caret to open); Home and the Male / Female toggle stay outside the menus.
Names shown in red (kata, athletes, tournaments, countries) are links that jump to that entry's detail card — they work in cards, findings tables, and search results.
After following a link, a ← Back button (bottom-left) returns you; it disappears once you're back at the start or click a tab manually.

How do I reach a tab, jump between related entries, and get back?

🔍

Global Search Bar

The search bar (top-right) covers kata, athletes, tournaments, and countries at once.
Results appear as you type; click one to jump to its detail card.

I know the name of the kata or athlete I'm looking for. How do I get there fast?

⇄

Male / Female Toggle

The Male / Female buttons (top-right) switch every table, chart, and stat between the two datasets instantly.
Hover over a button for that gender's full season summary.
Figures are numbered by gender so you can cite them: male K-1, A-1, …, female FK-1, FA-1, …

Do I want to explore male kata results or female kata results?

🆚

Compare Button

Every kata, athlete, and country detail card has a ⇄ Compare button in its header.
Click it, pick a second entry of the same type, and the two are shown side by side with the better value in each stat highlighted (green wins, beige ties).
Athlete comparisons add a head-to-head record; use Change to swap in a different opponent.

How do two athletes (or kata, or countries) stack up against each other?

Data Tabs

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Reading the Tables

Click any column header to sort (click again to reverse); hover a header for a tooltip explaining it.
Each main table has a pinned Averages row at the top.

How do I sort and read the data tables?

🗂

Detail Cards

Click any row in a data table to open its detail card — an in-depth profile of that entry.
A small number under a stat (e.g. 3/42) is its rank among all entries, and (T) marks a tie.
What's inside varies by tab: a kata card lists every athlete who performed it; an athlete card adds kata repertoire, a bout-by-bout log, head-to-head records, and medals; a tournament card shows medalists plus everyone who appeared; a country card breaks down its athletes, kata, and tournaments.

What do I get when I click a row? What does the rank number mean?

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The 5 Tabs

Kata — Per-kata stats including performances, average score, win rate, unique athletes (who have performed it) and their average score on that specific kata, etc.
Athletes — Per-athlete stats including performances, average score, win rate, average differential in score vs. their opponent, which kata they've performed (and their average score on each), all opponents (and their win rate against each), etc.
Tournaments — Per-tournament stats including the countries represented, medalists, kata performed, etc. Use the timeline at the top to visualize and navigate the 2024-25 season.
Countries — Per-country stats: athletes, medals, performances, etc. The world map shades countries by athlete count (darker red = more athletes); click a country to open it.
Medals — Side-by-side male and female medal tables showing each country's gold, silver, bronze, and total across all nine tournaments.

What does each of the five data tabs show?

Analysis Tabs

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Kata Analysis

A Season Leaders strip at the top highlights the kata topping each metric — most performed, most performers, highest average score, highest win rate, highest single score, and most consistent. Each box has its own accent color; when several kata tie for the top value, the box shows the count instead of a name.
Charts on kata trends: popularity, average score, win rate, tier breakdowns, and how each kata scores versus performers' personal baselines (a rough measure of whether it runs "harder" or "easier" than their norm).
A written summary above the charts covers the season's notable kata storylines.

Which kata are athletes performing well with? Which do top athletes choose most?

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Athlete Analysis

A Season Leaders strip at the top highlights the athlete leading each metric — most performances, tournaments attended, medals, highest average score, highest win rate, and best score differential. Each box has its own accent color; when athletes tie for the top value, the box shows the count — hover it to see everyone tied.
Charts ranking athletes by average score and win rate, a score-vs-win-rate scatter, and a breakdown of which countries sent the most competitors. Every bar links to a detail card.
An Athlete Spotlight above the charts highlights standout performers.

Who are the top-scoring athletes? Which countries dominated?

⚖️

Male vs. Female

Kata unique to each gender, shown as tables.
A Venn diagram of the overlap, and the top 5 per gender.
A bar chart plus sortable table of the Male − Female average score gap for every shared kata.

Are there kata only one gender performs? Which kata do males and females score most differently on?

Info

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Notes

How the data was collected, what's missing and why, kata tier definitions, WKF scoring rules, and how to read win rate.
Start here if anything seems unclear or unexpected.

How was this data collected? What do the stats actually mean?

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About

The author's background and the motivation behind the project.
Methodology notes, and links to download the raw CSV data used to build the site.

Who made this site and why? Where can I get the raw data?

Kata Tier System

Kata are classified into three tiers (Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner) based on the USA Karate - Official Kata List (see Figure App-2 in References for more information).

In competition, a competitor may only perform a kata from their tier or lower. For example, a competitor in an Intermediate Kata Division may not perform an Advanced kata; they must perform an Intermediate or Beginner kata.

At Tier 1 WKF Events, all divisions are Advanced, meaning any kata may be performed (Advanced, Intermediate, or Beginner).

Advanced: High-difficulty kata featuring complex techniques, unusual stances, or rare traditional forms. Almost exclusively performed at elite international level. Examples: Suparinpei, Unsu, Ohan, Papuren, Gojushiho Sho.
Intermediate: Mid-level kata common at national and continental level, occasionally seen at WKF events. Examples: Shisochin, Seienchin, Kanku Dai.
Beginner: Lower-difficulty kata rarely seen at this level of competition.

Tiers are broad bands, not a strict ranking. Difficulty varies widely within each tier, and the bands overlap: the most demanding Intermediate kata are harder than the least demanding Advanced kata. The majority of Advanced kata were performed, while only a small minority of Intermediate kata were performed, indicating that, when choosing Intermediate kata, elite athletes only chose the best of them. See Figure K-10 to see which Advanced and Intermediate kata were and were not performed.

Each curve shows how the kata in one tier spread across difficulty. Where the curves overlap, some Intermediate kata are more advanced than some Advanced kata.

#	Kata	Tier	Performances	Athletes	Avg Score	Median	Min	Max	Range	Std Dev	Win Rate	Score Differential

#	Athlete	Country	Medals	Performances	Tournaments	Avg Score	Median	Min	Max	Range	Win Rate	Differential

#	Tournament	Performances	Athletes	Unique Kata	Countries	Avg Score

#	Country	Athletes	Performances	Tournaments	Avg Score	Best Score	Win Rate	Medals

Season Leaders

Score & win-rate leaders require more than 5 performances.

Figure K-1

Kata Popularity

Figure K-2

Kata Average Score

Figure K-3

Kata Win Rate

Figure K-4

Performances vs. Average Score

Figure K-5

Kata Score vs. Athlete's Average

Kata	Diff vs Athlete Avg	Performances

Figure K-6

Standard Deviation of Kata Scores vs. Number of Performers

Kata	Unique Performers	Score Std Dev

Figure K-7

Average Score by Tournament

Figure K-8

Kata Tier Breakdown

Figure K-9

Kata Tier Counts

Tier	Kata in Tier	Kata Performed	Kata Unperformed	Performances

Figure K-10

Performed & Unperformed Kata by Tier

Season Leaders

Score & win-rate leaders require more than 5 performances.

Figure A-1

Top 20 Athletes by Average Score

Figure A-2

Top 20 Athletes by Win Rate

Figure A-3

Athletes by Country

About the Data

I manually compiled performance data from sportdata.org, the official online platform used by the WKF for scoring sheets and tournament results.

The dataset covers 9 tournaments: the four 2024 Karate1 Premier League events (Paris, Antalya, Cairo, Casablanca), the four 2025 K1 events (Cairo, Hangzhou, Paris, Rabat), and the 2025 World Karate Championships in Cairo.

Three datasets: Male Kata, Female Kata, and Medals.

Male Kata & Female Kata datasets

1,970 rows (1,006 male, 964 female) — one kata performance per row.
8 columns: Kata, Score, Avg Score, Won?, Karateka, Round #, Tournament, Opponent.
Avg Score equals Score divided by 5. All analyses involving scores use the average score only.
Won? is a True/False field indicating whether this performance beat the performance it was judged against.
Round # is one of rr (round robin — the pools stage), r1, r2, r3, or r4 (rounds 1–4 of the bracket stage).

Medals dataset

9 rows — one tournament per row.
8 columns: 1st place, 2nd place, and two 3rd places (each tournament awards two bronze medals), for both male and female.

See the References tab to download the datasets.

Missing Data

The tables below summarize missing data for each gender. Analyses involving kata names or scores only use rows where that data is present.

Male

Metric	Count	Percent

Female

Metric	Count	Percent

Notes on Interpretation

Kata with very few performances (fewer than ~10) may have skewed statistics due to small sample size.
Athletes who competed in only one or two tournaments may have unrepresentative stats due to small sample size.
A kata with a high average score, median score, etc. may simply be performed by a smaller pool of elite specialists; it is not necessarily "better" than other kata.
Male and female events are entirely separate.
If two athletes have very similar numbers of performances (e.g. Maho Ono has 52, Grace Lau has 48), that offers little to no insight when comparing their competitive seasons. A large gap in performance count indicates that one competitor often reaches the bracket stage and progresses further in tournaments; a small gap is usually just the result of one competitor being randomly drawn into a pool of three instead of four, which yields one fewer performance.

This work is dedicated to Shihan Carl Hultin, who gave me a lifelong passion for Karate and self-improvement through hard work.

About Me

My name is Gordon Jay Chan, and I began training in karate at age six. I train Hayashi-ha Shito-ryu, but when I entered university I joined the campus Shotokan Karate club, training in Shotokan alongside my Shito-ryu practice, and I now coach that same club.

I have been competing since I was ten years old. Kata has always been the dimension of karate I find most compelling: the depth of technique, the demands of precision under pressure, and the endless pursuit of refinement.

Why I Made This

I've always been interested in kata competition. Why do people choose certain kata? Which kata is that athlete's best? Are there trends in kata selection and performance? I was also curious about the hard numbers behind each kata: median score, max score, and so on. That way, the next time someone claimed "Actually, I think Ohan Dai was more popular than Unsu," I'd finally have real data instead of guesswork. At university I studied Management Information Systems and took a course on Data Science with Python, so I applied those analytical skills to elite international kata competition.

This project is a resource for me, and hopefully many other curious people, to answer as many of those questions as possible. I want a clearer picture of which kata are chosen at the highest level, how scores compare across athletes and tournaments, and everything in between. I hope it helps others explore the trends and questions they have too!