Full report
As many of you know, the Unified ITF world championships was held in Hatfield from Friday 2nd august, to Sunday 4th august, and we at Palcic Taekwondo had a small team that entered this most prestigious of events.
We are very proud to announce that we did extremely well in this world championship, and picked up a total of –
1 x gold medal
4 x silver medals
2 x bronze medals
The event was truly amazing, with over 28 countries entering, with people travelling as far as China, Japan, Australia, USA, Iran, South Africa, and many other distant parts of the worlds to compete.
Day one was the black belts, and as to be expected, represented a very high standard, with some of the best sparring and patterns in the world. I am very happy to say, that we can count ourselves in amongst this incredible high standard, as our first two medals came from this day. First up to win a world silver medal was –
Ewa Iwanow (first degree black belt lady from our Hemel Hempstead club) – Ewa eventually won Silver medal in LADIES BLACK BELT PATTERNS – after going through many tough rounds, knocking out Irelands favourite to win, Ewa eventually lost in the final to the Italian champion, but even then it was a very close round. A great result for Ewa, in a very strong division.
On this day too –
Kieran Mallon (second degree black belt, and rising star, also from our Hemel Hempstead school) got a world silver medal in 15-17 year old black belt special technique division – this is a truly exciting event in which you have to compete with others performing flying kicks, reaching certain heights or distances. Kieran beat all opponents and showed spectacular height on his flying kick, hitting the board with a flying front kick that was placed almost 3 metres in air! In the final he did not perform to his best so narrowly lost to his opponent. We will definitely be seeing even greater results from Kieran in the near future (he recently won gold medal in this black belt only event at the LTSI open tournament)
Also from the black belt day –
Ryan Dedman from our friend’s school in Weymouth picked up a bronze medal in boys 2nd degree patterns. Our coach Suhrab Sayfi played a great coaching role in this event. And Ryan’s kicks in the patterns were amazing.
On the Sunday, our colour belts were up against some tough competition from students from abroad. We had 5 colour belts enter, and all of them showed great spirit and courage in the face some very tough competitors from across the world.
Our first medal of the day for the colour belts came from Saloni Shah, who destroyed her opponent in the finals to get a gold at girls red belt sparring! Amazing result for Saloni from our Wembley School!
Next up was Annaliese Morris, and Melissa Shahadi, who both got silver medals in girl’s green belt sparring in their respective weights.
Both of these girls are from our newly formed Kensington school, and both only narrowly lost the finals, so came away with silver medals.
Also from Weymouth school Edith Dedman, bravely fought her way through to bronze medal in girls red belt sparring.
A big congratulations also to Helen Oates from Hemel school, who showed great courage competing in a very strong ladies black belt division,
and also to Reece Edwards for the courage and fighting spirit he showed in a really strong 15-17 year old red belt boys division (those boys did not travel across the world to tickle each other!!!) well done!!!!
I need to give special thanks to our team who worked so hard behind the scene to represent our group and make these results possible.
Thank you to our black belt instructors who were selected to umpire at the competition – ANIL MALHOTRA IV, AMIT SONIK IV, ANAND THAKRAR IV, JAYMIN THAKRAR III, and also to our team coach,
who went way beyond the call of duty in getting the results we got – SUHRAB SAYFI III.
I hope that the many parents and students who went to watch these great world championships enjoyed the day. We are on the world map now, and we intend to get even stronger for the next event!
Taekwon
Paul Palcic VI
