Back at the end of February, a team from Gibraltar participated at the British Taekwondo International Poomsae Championships, at the K2 Arena in Crawley, achieving great results.
Hundreds of volunteers spent a great deal of time transforming the hall into a global arena for Poomsae. The championships received top athletes including Commonwealth, European and World medallists with a grand total of 520 players in different categories from 18 different countries such as Germany, France, Russia and Denmark. Just one of the beauties of Poomsae is its accessibility to all ages and the event was a real demonstration of that. The youngest player to compete was aged 5, whilst the oldest was aged 75. The event was supported with a live-streaming facility. Technology facilitated the opportunity for the world to watch and listen live. Judging Co-ordinator Grandmaster Shin headed a team of International Judges from 19 countries.
The first of our players to compete was Macy Cornelio in the A Class U14 Dan Individuals category. This was followed by Megan Ruiz who competed in the A Class U17 Dan Individuals category. Both narrowly missed out on the semi-finals. Later that same day Macy also competed in A Class U14 Dan Pairs and Teams synchronized categories, achieving two bronze medals in both categories.
Coaches Masters Edward and Ernest Garcia are immensely proud of them, especially Macy for having excelled herself being her first competition in A Class. The girls and coaches will now analyse their performances and will continue to train at the highest level possible, to further their development to attend international championships in the very near future.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the event organisers for their hospitality and to congratulate them for such a great event.