Warwick Write-Up
First tournament of the year (hopefully first of many) and everything is good, we left the union Saturday afternoon about 2ish and then 10 minutes later returned to the union to pick up our kit, but this didn’t affect the high morale and although Charlee was an absolute nightmare (trust me he was, I was sitting next to him the whole journey and he would not shut up for about two hours and then he fell asleep on my shoulder ‘wtf’!) the journey still was good fun.
After 2-3 hours and a few service stops we arrived in Warwick, Hurray! A few minor glitches at the motel (Fabian was billed twice on his card!) and some unpacking later, we decided to head into the Warwick University Campus to check out the place and grab some munch. After a nice slice of cardboard pizza we headed back to the motel to sort everything out for the upcoming tournament the next day.
On return to the motel everyone went back to their rooms to get ready for the tournament Sunday. My room (Me, Adam and Man) decided to stay up until about 2am talking about completely random stuff and then just as we were falling to sleep, Fabian turns up and turns all the lights on! Lee’s snoring meant Fab couldn’t sleep, so we carried on talking about random stuff until about 3am and then I finally fell asleep, so I dunno what happened after that.
Next day and all was well, everyone was ready on time except for Arj who is always late, but the general morale was high. We got to the University in good time and weighed in, somehow Nick was middleweight! and had lost 10kg somewhere.
The tournament started with the white belt categories and Man and Dimitri both beat their first opponents comfortably in the first round with some nice kicks and quick jabs to the head, but Adam who was also in their category, failed to beat his first opponent; although he did pull of some nice kicks and a very nice, but useless, spin (ballerina). In the next round both Dimitri and Man were very unlucky and lost 4-5, which meant that they had to spar each other for bronze! So after 2 minutes of shouting ‘come on guys’ (because we didn’t know who to cheer for), Dimitri beat Man 6-5 in a very close match and took Bronze, good job fella.
Next up was our sexy ladies and Lily (with her unlimited flexibility) took silver after beating two opponents with some nice high kicks and aggressive punching! It didn’t quite go as well for Lisa who after losing her first fight, got kicked in the nose during her second fight and had to go to hospital (she was winning 6-2). Rest assured though, she’s OK and is still as pretty as ever.
The next category was blue belt, Steve was up first and without quite comfortably beat his first two opponents but then lost in the final despite a good effort and came home with silver.
Charlee, who was also in the same category, took the bronze medal home accompanied by about 50 excessive contact warnings.
After me and Charlee it was Nick and Arj that stepped up and because of the unlikely twist of events where Nick had somehow lost 10kg, they had to fight each other in the final (this is of course, after they had defeated their earlier opponents without too much hassle) and one very impressive fight later, Arj came home with a gold medal and Nick silver. Good job to both of you guys!
We then had to wait around for about two hours for the black belt sparring to start! Paul and Jack both beat their first opponents comfortably; Paul was obviously motivated by his 3 year old niece who was screaming “KICK HIM PAUL!!!” at the top of her voice! How cute. The next round though, Jack and Paul were both unlucky and were defeated and so had to fight each other for bronze! It was a great fight, but in the end Jack’s punches conquered over Paul’s kicks (although they both ran out of stamina after like 10 seconds!) and Jack came home with a bronze medal.
Jack also took part in the patterns and destruction part of the competition but didn’t do too well (even after showing the judges his Taekwondo Encyclopedia!) and came home with only sore knuckles, so I’m not going to mention it!
Overall it was a great weekend, which was loads of fun and hopefully there will be plenty more in the future! Thanks a lot to Fabian (our instructor) and Lee (our driver) for their help over the weekend.
Click here for the videos
Medals:
Arjang Khayyam (Arj) – Gold
Shao Chen Li (Nick) – Silver
Stephen Burt – Silver
Tian Ying (Lily) – Silver
Jack Miles – Bronze
Dimitri Batrouri – Bronze
Efstratios Chatzikonstatino (Charlee) – Bronze
