New Zealand Continue To Lead World Champs
Friday 29 May 2015, 5:34PM
By dave worsley
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New Zealand continues to lead the medal table at ITF Taekwon-Do world championships in Jesolo, Italy after two more golds and several other medals were added to the tally on day two of the competition.
New Zealand now has a total of seven gold, four silver and nine bronze ahead of Norway in second on four golds and Poland in third with three golds.
The latest gold medals came from Sean Neary (Legacy, Birkdale, Auckland) in the men’s senior specialty event and also from Hunter Edwards from the Legacy gym in Auckland in the men’s junior 1st dan patterns.
Two silver medals were picked up by Angel McCreedy-Pilcher (Dragon Spirit gym Papatoetoe) in the female 1st dan junior patters and Kyla Walton (Behampore gym, Wellington) in the female junior power category.
Three bronze medals were won thanks to Michael Davis from Palmerston North in senior sparring while Courtney Church from the Paul M gym in Papakura won bronze in the female junior 1st dan patterns and Tauranga’s Frances Lloyd in the female junior power also picked up bronze.
Over 50 countries are taking part in the tournament with Argentina, Canada, Italy, Norway, Russia, United States and New Zealand all having 50 or more junior and senior athletes competing. The tournament continues until Sunday.
There are four core events: patterns; sparring; power test; special technique. Within each of these events there are both individual and team categories. The categories are further split into junior (under 18) and senior (over 18) classifications, and there are separate male and female divisions. In the case of individual patterns, competitors are further classified by black belt rank, and individual sparring is split into six weight divisions. In addition to the four core events there is also Pre-arranged sparring, which is a pairs competition that has only junior and senior classifications
New Zealand finished second at the 2009 World Champs in Argentina, won the tournament in Wellington in 2011 and was third in Spain in 2013.