A team of 9 players including Olympic hopefuls Saf Khalil, Hader Shkara, Carmen and Carolina Marton recently traveled to China to compete in the world university games. A great performance saw Saf take the gold medal in the -58kg category, the first time an Australian has won a gold at this event. Congratulations on a superb effort Saf.
He fought Iran in the final winning by golden goal with a head shot!
You can watch the fight on Dartfish on the link below.
http://www.dartfish.tv/Presenter.aspx?CR=p1#!AQEBAAEBAAEBAQABAQAAAgEBABBMYXN0IGNvbXBldGl0aW9uAAEAGDIwMTEgU3VtbWVyIFVuaXZlcnNpYWRlcwEBAAZXZWlnaHQAAQAHLTU4a2dfTQAA
Also continuing to do exceptionally well is Carmen who won the bronze in the -62kg category, unfortunately going down to a strong competitor from Spain. A big congrats to you to Carmen!
Once again at this event the La Just electronic scoring system was used and by all accounts (including my own past experiences) scoring was extremely difficult. Perhaps its time the WTF took into consideration the ongoing issues that the inferior electronic scoring systems pose and that of the athletes feedback to make a ruling on this matter.
In two weeks time the four will travel to New Caledonia to compete in the Olympic Oceania Qualification Tournament to try to earn a place in the London Olympics. With only 128 spots available and four dedicated to the host country England, it puts into perspective how difficult it is for a Taekwondo athlete to succeed in making an Olympics.
In saying that our athletes are in a good position to reach that prestigious goal as this time they will be competing against Oceania Taekwondo members to qualify. Those countries include: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshal Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Soloman Islands, Tonga, Tuvala and Vanuatu.
As for the rest of us preparing for Nationals in two weeks it was a pleasant surprise to have both Carolina and Carmen give up their valuable time today to help out at state training. It just goes to show the level of commitment that these two girls have for our sport and developing our future athletes. Thank you girls and best of luck in the up coming weeks.
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