Taekwondo’s Winter Championships spirit unbeatable
Twenty members of Imperial College Taekwondo (ICUTKD) travelled to Nottingham for the Winter Championships held by the British Student Taekwondo Federation (BSTF). Returning home are 21 medals: ten bronze, seven silver and four gold across all disciplinaries. There has been an overall improvement in individuals’ performances since the previous competition in November. As ever, guiding and supporting the students were our instructors, Master Reza Saberi and Christopher Dancel.
The championship took place at Nottingham Trent University and opened up entries to both poomsae and sparring in World Taekwondo (WT) and International Taekwondo Federation (ITF). Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and WT-style have been part of the Olympics since 2002.
Although ICUTKD mainly focus on WT, a handful of members continues to practise ITF. Savya Aggarwal (gold and silver), Angela Sun (silver and bronze) and Wenbo Chen (bronze) are our main representatives in the competition. The club encourages both disciplines to work together. Johnny Kim (bronze) won his first medal in ITF sparring; he is our alumni who started his taekwondo journey with ICUTKD, training in WT for four years.
The club saw another treasured alumni and club coach as an A-class fighter as Liyan Chow (bronze), demonstrated years of practice in the ring. Other A-class fighters using the electronic gears were Sojin Park (bronze) and Jamie McNeil (silver). Special mention to beginner Thomas Kloska (bronze) and first-time competitors Gino La (bronze) and Myriam Belmekki (silver and gold), who fought persistently for countless numbers of rounds.
Aside from sparring, there is poomsae which involves strength and conditioning training. There were outstanding performances from our beginners Lucy Lei (gold), Camille Cheng (silver), Thomas Kloska (silver), Tara Sassel and Zeme Andrews-Haycocks. Our returning members continued to stand their ground as Cynthia Ho (bronze), Sophia Ppali (silver) and Andrew Bates (gold) showed off hours of practice prior to the competition.
With the scale of competition bigger than ever, the championship series is prime opportunity to learn from opponents and bond with other club members. Also, it conduces the focus of training.
Ultimately, we take away much more than just medals. The overall rankings will be released in the final competition of the Championship series in March. Until then, ICUTKD will continue to train hard and keep the spirits indomitable.
