For the two days of 14th and 15th of October the Polish historical City of Cracow became the capital of world karate. Tauron Arena – the venue – filled in with over two thousand competitors from most of the Earth’s continents: both Americas, Europe, Asia (Middle and Far East). They all came to prove they were the best in what we all do and love: Traditional Karate, our lives’ passion.
The UK National Squad, a group of the best practitioners and competitors selected by the Board of TKFGB, turned up, too. We eventually managed to gather a considerable number of twenty five competitors in all age categories: children, cadets and seniors – quite remarkable looking at the size of our new Federation.
The expectations were high and the performance even exceeded those. For the first time in the short history of our Federation we brought two medals from an event of this calibre:
These are even more valuable acknowledging the almost absolute domination of the Polish young competitors over all the other teams.
Also the Senior Kumite team were very close to fighting for the podium. They eventually had to admit the Czech team’s supremacy, but by two points, only.
We spent the last year preparing hard and once again, the competition turned out to be a best possible training and the confrontation of actual skills in a situation of fighting against the strongest possible opponents. Progress was recorded and conclusions have been made; we are already planning the training framework for the next year’s European Championships.
