World Champs Report New Zealand 2011 part 1
By Gerard Kelly
The time had finally arrived, months of hard training and preparation had gone into this campaign and the team was feeing confident. MR Van Beelen and myself were feeling better than we ever had prior to a world champs event so we could feel something special was about to take place.
Although we had a short flight, the sunshine coast contingent had the worst flight arriving at midnight in Wellington, oh well that’s how it goes, but spirits were still high. The first day was to be a free day for the team to get acclimatised and rested for the days ahead. Time for some team photos later in the day and the distribution of our Doboks and sparring gear by our awesome mummy Gail!
The next day we had a couple of training sessions mainly devoted to the individual competitors to get there heads in the game, things were starting to get real for the first timers… All of the seasoned competitors were there for the world champs newcomers and lots of encouragement was given. Next day comes and we get our first look at the venue and get to train inside, this is why we do it, the excitement, the scale is like nothing else for Taekwon-do competitors. We start seeing other teams going through their paces and a few of us catch up with friends made through past competitions.
With all of the training done it was time to get into it and for the first time we have an opening ceremony at the opening!!! It was as expected fantastic with traditional Maori greetings and of course the Haka and an awesome demo by the kids of New Zealand Taekwon-do. Then it was time for the real thing!!!!
The junior individual competitors were up first and it was frantic!!! The sparring, patterns, breaking, special and traditional sparring were all on at the same time and the chants of AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI could be heard all over the arena!!! It wasn’t long before we had our first medals in patterns 3rd dan female with Indija “ Jonsey” Anderson and Bianca Bin ( It May have been Kiara… they look the same to me!!!) taking out third place and Samantha Faddoul getting bronze in her division in sparring!!! Awesome!!! Jonsey also took out third in individual breaking!
Trent Hayden fought a hard road in the special techniques with a 3 way tie taking forever to get a result (hurry up Trent I need to eat!!!) resulting in a bronze for the lanky lad with funky hair!! It was his sparring we were all looking forward to but it was not to be. Trent fought well but lost on warnings and that’s how it goes sometimes. He, along with the rest of the team were hurting for his loss, but he showed what it is to be a true martial artist and looked at his fight as another experience. The other juniors showed that Australia is not that far behind and we are making headway into the international stage and represented our country with honour.
Day two of competition and it was time for the seniors to strut their stuff. We had again quite a few competitors on so it was difficult to keep track sometimes as to who was where, but we always seemed to have a good amount of supporters cheering our guys and girls on! For me I was really looking forward to watching Charlie Van Beelen and his last attempt at individual power breaking medals. I was so nervous for him yet relaxed at the same time. I managed to sneak in as his coach, I wasn’t going to let anyone else be there so it was me and him, like it has been for years! Charlie powered through his punch like it wasn’t even there so he was pumped! Maybe too pumped as he missed his knife hand and got only one point on his side kick. His next 2 breaks however were pure vanilla and he was so happy with that!! I could not have been prouder of this man I have trained with for the last ten years or so. All we had to do was wait and see if anyone could beat his result. He ended up with a bronze medal after New Zealand took out gold and USA only beating him by 1 point!!! I was speechless and was shedding more than a tear or two for him and so happy and proud all at the same time!!!
What an exhausting day!!!! …………… stay tuned for part two of my report!!!!
