Europe ITF Taekwon-do Federation
Czech Open 2015 - report
Busy Saturday, relaxing Sunday – Czech Open 2015
Although international competitors had been arriving during Friday afternoon and evening, all pre-competition fuss at the sports centre Czech Sport Union wasn’t happening until Saturday morning. Originally there were 350 competitors registered, but some parties were struck by illnesses, which is pretty common for this time of the year. After the registration we could say with certainty that the competition is going to have 320 competitors from 33 different clubs and 9 different countries.
Even after some complications, specifically with printing reports for coaches meeting, the introductory ceremonial assembly was held at around 2 p.m. and after that the competition itself began. Saturday’s schedule was jam packed, everything began with youth patterns, then continued junior and adult categories. With all pattern categories completely done we moved to next events - youth sparring and special techniques, both these events were interlined with other categories.
Number of youth competitors was quite high, especially male category of blue belts was listed on four pages and the winner of this category had to manage to win six times before the final!
Saturday’s afternoon, however, had only one “negative” – youth special techniques took too much time and that unfortunately meant we had to extend the ending time of the competition’s day.
Just before 20:00 we announced all most successful youth male and female Taekwon-do competitors, in the male category it was Lukáš Martiník from Opava and in the female category it was Martina Frenková from Nomo Lišov.
Time change that occurred during the Sunday’s early morning hours didn’t help our rest before the next day of competing, nevertheless everybody was ready and eager to compete in the morning. It all began at 8:30 a.m. right away with sparring in junior and adult categories. Everyone brought their best to the ring and we’ve been watching great performances from Czech, English, Finnish, French, Dutch, Latvian, Polish, and Russian and Slovakian competitors.
Sunday was a very easy-going day, if you’re wondering why, then we can tell you that it was due to the fact that most of the events and categories we’ve managed to do on Saturday. That caused the final rewarding of best competitors and clubs took place right after 1 p.m. The best competitors were:
- Veronika Kokášová, adult female A (Hwa-Rang)
- SliviaBanárová, adult female B (Slovakia team)
- Tomáš Vodička, adult male A (Sonkal)
- Jan Kummel, adult male B (Tong-Il)
- Barbora Buchtová, junior female A (Club Brno)
- Vendula Mertová, junior female B (ITF Frýdek-Místek)
- Anikienko Andrey, junior male A (Black Belt, Russia)
- Daniel Fialka, junior male B (Nomo)
Ranks of three most successful clubs were almost even and the winner was chosen by comparing the number of silver medals:
- ITF Frýdek-Místek (7-13-15)
- Club Brno (7-11-4)
- Karviná (7-2-10)
I would like to thank for team of organizers to all clubs, competitors, coaches and most of all to referees for their hard work. Without it there would be no competiton.
I hope to see most of you again in 2016 and I wish for even more competitors to come!
Ondřej Vrábel
You can download photos from the event at the following link:
