Oasis Leisure Centre, North Star Avenue, Swindon
Sat 16 Feb 2019
In Swindon at the break of dawn for year another TKD Tournament. Today is the PUMA International Open 2019. Left the house at 5:00am for the 3hr journey with everyone wrapped in in blankets. Robin was a trooper getting everyone up and in the car! Registered and settled ready for the start.
So Ashton got third place bronze today. Huge medal which was fab. But I do think he lost out in the second round to a guy he should’ve annihilated. I was fuming initially because his opponent kept stepping out of the area. But reviewing the video, there were numerous spinning kicks which we’re scored on Ashton, as he was using his punches as opposed to to kicks.
Long wait until Ethan and Tyler’s category. All the junior and adult black belt categories were up first in this tournament. Even got all my work done that I planned out to do on my laptop, with intermittent wifi!
5 hours later at 5:35pm, Ethan and Tyler’s category was finally called up!
Ethan comfortably won his first fight. Tyler, unfortunately just missed out which was disheartening because he ‘should have’ had a by through the first round, but later found out that the organisers reshuffled the competitors – to what appeared to give the advantage to the 3 ITF competitors in that category >:-[
Ethan went on to win Gold :-) Super proud of him – and also for Robin’s top coaching and for spotting the opponent’s weakness after first fighting against Tyler in the earlier round.
Finally left the competition around 6:30pm! Not quite as late as last weekend in Solihull – but such a painfully long day with another 3 hours journey back home.
In summary
Registration and weigh-ins were well organised and the competition started well.
I thought the organisers had got through all the Black Belts by 12:30; as there were 4 areas not being used for 30 mins but then they started calling up more Black Belt patterns.
Colour Belt Sparring didn’t start until after 5:00 pm.
Medals were good quality and decent size; the ribbon design was also unique unlike most other competitions.
The venue itself was great with plenty of services such as a cafe, changing rooms with showers.
The areas were well laid out and allowed spectators and competitors around the mats with minimum interference with spectators views.