DUTCH OPEN - SILVER

Gwladys Espague from France and I on the podium. My support team. Thanks (l toR) Andy, Daniel, Taeho and David
The Aussie Team

We just finished the Dutch open in Eindhoen, where I placed 2nd. The comp went from 9am in the morning till 2am the next day. ..and yes I was fighting my final at 2am! It was an extremely long and tiring day, but a successful one non the less. I learnt alot from my experience and pushed past some of the most excrutiating pain I have had in a while. My final was not the best, I tried new things, I tried to fight with two feet but one of them just didnt want to connect with anything (having swollen up in the semi) and part of it felt like a dream. At least I can take this matt time with me to the World Champs and hopefully progress past my mistakes and make the 1st place podium.

Briefly

1st fight: Won against Greece

2nd fight: Won against Germany

Quarter Final: Won against Belarus

Semi Final: Won against Sweden

Final: Lost to France

1 EPEANGUE, GWLADYS, FRA
2 MORGAN, TINA, AUS
3 SOLHEIN, NINA, NOR
3 KYLBORN, LIE, SWE

Final Korea Days

We spent the last few days at KoGAS Company team! It is an awsome team - but only guys training there. It was good because it allowed us to do our own training with them and practice basic techniques for competition. The coach, Mr Park had helped the Aussie team significantly and was vey welcoming to us.

ROAD DRAMAS IN KOREA

We had two mini buses in Korea which carted us from hall to hall and dinner to dinner. Either InDong, Daniel or Taeho would drive us to the training sessions. It was always fascinating travelling in both buses and here are some of the stories to read about....

STORY ONE - Taeho always liked to take the short cuts home – which ended up just taking longer! One evening after training he decided to try and skip all the traffic and drive in the emergency lane – a pretty good idea, because I’m sure the smell of sweat in the car for over an hour would be enough for anyone to curl over and die. Anyways – he was driving down the lane and BANG! Adam thought they hit a person and freaked out, whilst most others thought it was a gun shot. Bernie was just in complete shock! The only person to realise what happened was David (the Orthopaedist). He saw the sign travelling straight towards him, but thought Taeho would move out of the way. The sign hit the side vision mirror and smashed it into his side window! Hehe all of us back at the hotel had bit of a cackle when we found out! Not only did it take them about 40 minutes longer to get home but their secret of the smashed window was only a secret for about 30 seconds! Every day after that, there was complete laughter every time we thought back to that moment/or everytime Taeho mentioned the mirror! hehe the “classic coverup” of getting it fixed without anyone else finding out....do o do..it wasn't very effective!....:)

STORY TWO: And without fail the other bus Coach was driving had its dramas too! He accidently scraped another cars side door on parking at one o the venues! We barely even noticed scratching the very – very – very expensive black car, however since the Korean man was inside his vehicle at the time we did it, nobody could escape any blame. Hmmm I wonder how much that cost! YIKES!

STORY THREE: Kylie was hit by a motorcycle! She was walking along and out of nowhere a motorcycle roared down and hit her. Kylie was oblivious to what had happened, thinking that it was Jasmine pushing onto the road her rather than a bike hitting her! On a brighter note, I walked straight into a stationary motorcycle – I must say it has been one of my finer blonde moments to date.

Beef for 10

We were invited out to dinner with Yongin University management one evening in Korea and geeez did we eat alot!

Carmen, Kylie, Indong and I were sitting on one section of the table and ate together off one of the hotplates. As I can't eat pork we had to order beef, hehe and the only beef they served at this place was pure Australian! YIPEEE! (Kylie and Indong were actually both dieting so it was really only myself and Carmen eating the food - Kylie was the chef for us:) Anyways - Taeho kept on looking over at us eating and commenting on how much we were having. The the slabs of beef kept coming out, we just kept on eating them! I think we just needed iron and a good Aussie tasting meal!

To cut it short...cArmen and I ate enough for 10 people apparently! And Lets just say the cost of beef is 3 times as expensive as the pork everyone else ate!:S:S OOOPPPSSS!

Here are some pictures of the night:) It was a good one to which I thoroughly enjoyed!the last one is what was leftover.

KOREA - TRAINING CAMP NUMBER 16

ON the subway to Dondaemun Stadium. Be quick coz You wouldn't want to miss out on this item in subway accident! Here we have Korea's classic emergency gear...BUT ONLY AVAILABLE FOR 10 PEOPLE:) But at least those ten people get instructions:) After training at YongIn University. (I'm glad I don't have to run that mountain every morning!)
Running trail for anyone and everyone. Mainly you see old people with strange looking visors!

Its over half way through this training camp and although we have only been here two weeks I feel as though we have been away 2 months! We train every morning and every evening, and if you could believe it I am actually getting better with my running!....ohhh I hate running so much....SO MUCH...but at least I can handle 6 fast laps around a track without spewing my guts up at the end. I think if it was a year ago my body wouldn't have been able to take it!

Our main venues for this tour have been Chede and Yongin. We haven't had much of an opportunity for sparring because the Korean teams have their university games selections next week, non the less training has challenging and rewarding in different ways. China is here also and they have been my partners for most of the time. The other session we had four line sparring partners and out of a room full of Korean players each of the Chinese wanted to partner with me. There was no escaping them, it was like they leached on to me in the change over and I couldn't say no. It's good though I guess, I'm getting used to fighting taller people of different weights. Just for a bit of background info, the Chinese Women's team are all over 6 foot I believe, and that includes all weight categories!!! YIKES!

Anyways one week until the Dutch Open!:)

SNOWING IN KOREA:)

My foot after comp..yikes!
Its snowing!!! Jas ans I
:)Finally got ruth!:) hehe

Its snowing in Korea...yesterday when we finished training we were welcomed by the snow outside. It was falling quite heavily and I'm so excited to finally see it fall. It snowed all night and when we arrived to morning training today the whole oval was white! Its B-UTIFUL and absolutely FREEZING!

GORILLA MONKEY DANCING - ELECTRONIC STYLE!

What it looks like from the distance. It has a very old style about it. The head guard protrudes in front of your face and sits just above your eyes making it difficult to see. The ears have no breathing room which I think is dangerous if you get hit in the head. The Australian Team that went across to fight. Jasmine, Kylie, Tina, Katrina, Ryan, Safwan, Burak and Adam.

Well its official! The new wtf electronic scoring system competition was ineffective!...We all looked like gorillas dancing in the ring, and the winner..-the best dancer of them all! hehe. With the new system it is so hard to score points but very easy to punch, depending on the lucky-dip draw of which chest guard you got. Some could score by just touching it with you hand, others you could punch as hard as you wanted with your knuckles and nothing would show. Everyone didnt know what to expect and the whole game changed. Everyone just wanted to punch on in the clench (we looked very strange to say the least) and with the foot protectors no body could keep there grounding. Oscar Salazar...Silver medal olympic games. ...Lost Within 30 secs of the fight! The other player scored 7 points punching....but it wasn't really punching it was a tap with his hands. Afterwards Oscar stood on the court tapping his own chest guard with his hand and scored 5 points!!!....How can a system be made where you can hit yourself and score points for the other player....VERY CONTROVERSIAL!

They changed the rules a bit. The 4th round sudden death could go as long as you want as long as someone had a 1+ reading, they were the winner. If you were -1...that meant you had to still get to 1 to win. One match seriously had a 20 minute sudden death and the coach wanted to throw the towel in but wasn't allowed too!!! The girls were out of breathe, puffed and had to stand apart from each other to get there energy back. As you couldnt sit down or take a break they had to fight on. As no body could score points they had to double check alot that the computers were still on and runnning because what we recognised as points, nothing registered!

It was a joke and the biggest laugh..!!:) But Im proud to be a part of it non the less. It was definately an experience to which I hope next time the system has improved and becomes more fair to everyone and true to the nature of taekwondo. I fought against China and was winning 4-1 in the last round. By with my own error China scored two more point quickly and I couldnt stay on my feet, so I lost 3 kyongos...(1/2) points. (YES AND THEY TOOK 2 FULL POINTS OFF ME...HOW DOES THAT WORK???) hmmm

They changed the rules on the second day and took out the gloves, but the competition was still so boring and nobody seemed to favor the system at all. No body new what scores were scores. If you hit soft, you had a point, if you hit hard, you didn't, even if you hit the head hard you may not score the points! Push kicks were the most effective of them all.....:S

There is alot of work needing to be done and proabably alot more that could be said about the system but I will leave it as that! I do not feel this system will help raise the profile of Takeowndo in the world. It was so boring and has only made a mockery of our sports very foundations.