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Posted on August 11th 2015
Taekwondo Success at International Level
Northern Ireland International Open
Friday 19th June 2015
On Friday afternoon, my friends, my mum and I were ready to travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We reached the airport by 11am ready for our flight to Belfast. After arriving in Belfast we waited for a minibus to take us to our designated hotel. From there, we unpacked our suitcase and got ready for the upcoming competition.
Saturday 20 June 2015
The competition day had come and I needed a lot of energy for the day ahead as I would be competing in three different categories! After breakfast we travelled to the arena and met up with all of our other taekwondo friends and sat down in the audience. My first competition would be at an early 10am on the furthest court. My next category would then be at 3pm on centre court. Eventually, my final category was one of the latest of the whole day which was at 6:30pm. How would I conserve my energy?
Before I knew it one and a half hours of training had flown by and my category was called to court 1. I was one of the last people to compete and was very nervous. The judges were watching intensely my every move. I completed my first performance and saw the score. It showed I was 3rd. That was good. I had made the final eight. That was hard as there were quite a lot of people in this category. I was pleased. Then came round two. I had to get into the final four if I wanted to medal – which I did. This time I was more comfortable but still nervous as there were three very good competitors I had to try to beat. My second performance was over and I had won a bronze medal. I was pleased as the top two places were taken by experienced competitors.
Soon the time arrived for us to go on the mats for the second competition. We lined up in the order given. We were third to perform. We did our bit and did our best. We felt confident but the others were also good. We waited for the scores. We held our breath for what seemed like a long time. The results came up. There was one more performance from a fellow teammate to follow and then we would know the final result. After their performance, the final results came. We had won the gold!! We couldn’t have been happier as this result held us in good stead for our European competition in Serbia.
Two medals was not enough for me and I had one more performance with two of my teammates still to come. We had never performed before but were put together to see how we would fare. We had some time to practice and we made the most of this. We worked well as a team and everyone took on board what we had to do. After what seemed like hours of practicing we went back to the main hall only to hear the announcement that it was our turn to perform. The teams lined up but we were first on this time round. (I don’t like to be the first one up but I guess it had to happen sometime.).
We tried our hardest and when we finished we felt good. Again, we waited with abated breath. The final scores were up. We did it! We won the gold!!!!!! . Yes, our first performance together and we did it.
We were so proud and pleased with ourselves we jumped for joy!!
By Hiren Visrolia – Y9
