World Championships Aruba - The Aftermath

It takes me sometime to regain my composure. I congratulate Iran again on the podium, put on a smile for the cameras and enjoy this moment. I am the silver medalist and it's still a great achievement.

Curiosity gets the better of me afterwards so I ask Mahdi (-68kg Iranian who speaks a little English) about their preparations. He tells me they have trained 2hrs in the morning, 2hrs at night, everyday for the past two months. I'm shocked to say the least. He asks me how much I got paid when I won the gold 2 years ago and I laugh telling him "nothing". For the Iranians a bronze is worth 20 gold pieces, a silver 40 gold pieces and a gold 80. I ask him how much a gold piece is and he tells me about $400. For a gold medal that's $32000! Unbelievable but that's what Taekwondo is for the Iranians. Their national sport like AFL is to us. Telling Jin this we both agree we're going to defect to Iran next year and have a good laugh about it. After having a few days to consider the Para tournament Im left with mixed feelings. Firstly I have to say this tournament is getting harder to win. Limited to only attacking the body makes scoring extremely challenging especially using the Daedo. It really would be great to see the rules changed to include head kicks but I can't see the WTF allowing that. Secondly the one minute rounds are too short. The game goes so fast that it's hard to adjust your tactics during the match. What this inevitably means is if your leading after the first round it is very easy to hold that one point buffer from your opponent. Speaking with a number of my Para athlete friends we all agree that we would prefer that the rules be the same as the regular competition. My personal opinion is I don't want to be treated any differently to my peers. In saying this though I can see the WTF's viewpoint in that there aim is to make para taekwondo accessible and safe to people of all varying abilities. And perhaps it needs to be safe and friendly for it to have any chance to be included as a Paralympic sport. Something that every athlete at the championships would love to see. A point I did note was that overall the level of competition is increasing with some of the players abilities being outstanding. I think you can see this more so with the countries who are really investing time and effort into the para taekwondo program, namely Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran. For this reason hopefully the sport will continue to grow and appeal to people from all backgrounds. As for me now I can sit back and relax in the sun and enjoy a beer. I had a chance to watch a little bit of the teams event which is pretty exciting. Lots of acrobatic head kicks as most players don't bother trying to score on the body. It's all about the head shots and that's what everyone wants to see. I was considering retiring after this but after another great experience doing what I love, competing and traveling I'm not so sure. It's hard to give away the thrill of it all. I guess time will tell.