The Great Britain National Taekwondo Poomsae Team is currently out in Tashkent, Uzbekistan competing at the 5th WTF World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships running from the 8-10th October 2010.

This years event is held at the 2,800 seat Universal Sports Palace Uzbekistan and is the biggest ever drawing nearly 500 athletes from a record 60 countries.

Day 1 has seen Great Britain start in fine form with the teams first ever medal in Taekwondo Poomsae.

Twice European Bronze Medallist Grandmaster Tong Wan Shin, who has reached the finals at the last three World Championships in 2nd Masters, was competing for the first time in 3rd Masters, a brand new division at the event. He secured Gold for the country, beating Korea convincingly in the final with a score of 7.28 to Korea's 7.03. Colombia and France both had to settle for bronze.

Master Yousuf Dildar from London also had a successful competition recording Great Britains highest placing at the World Championships in the 1st Masters Male division. He had an excellent start qualifying through to the Semi-finals in 3rd position. However as his opponents turned up the heat in the later rounds, Master Yousuf could only watch agonisingly as they put in some fabulous performances. Master Yousuf finished with a very respectable World Ranking of 6th with Turkey taking gold, Korea silver and Italy and Iran taking bronze.

Despite our successes on Day 1 our Junior athletes felt the pressure with expectations high after achieving the countrys best results last year in Egypt.

Sydney Craven competed in Junior Female in a large pool of 38 competitors. Despite qualifying for the semi finals with ease her performances of Keumgang and Taebaek were unfortunately not quite strong enough to get her into the final. Korea eventually took Gold, with China taking Silver and Vietnam and Iran taking home Bronze.

Guntur Dwiarmein has been the UK's top Junior Male for the last five years and this event was to be his last major championship before he moves up to 1st Senior next year. It was a tough category this year with 30 athletes altogether. Guntur performed well in the preliminary round but a tiny difference in score of 0.05 denied him a place in the semi-final. Korea went onto win the category with Vietnam taking Silver and Uzbekistan and Iran taking bronze.

Day 2 of the event today will see our 1st Seniors and 2nd Masters divisions in action.

Day 2 - Great Britain Team - Athletes

1st Senior Female - Taylor Parkins (Livingwell)
1st Senior Male - David Morrison (Ultimate)
2nd Masters Female - Sue Parkins (Livingwell)
2nd Masters Male - Ali Pourtaheri (Livingwell)

6th Korean Open Taekwondo championships Muji Korea 2010

The United Taekwondo Association travelled to Korea to train for twelve days and to compete in the Korean Open Championships in Muji South Korea.
The Team was headed by grand Master T W Shin 8th Dan Chairman of the UTA and BTCB National Poomsae coach. Mr Andrew Cawley from Staffs TKD was the team manager for this event and six team members were to compete in the Korean Open Poomsae event.
A schedule was arranged by Grand Master Shin, with the team training at camps in Seoul, Inchon and the Kukkiwon.

The first training session was organised with Master IL pil Kang WTF World poomsae champion and author of the book explanation of Official Taekwondo Poomsae. There were to be two sessions a day in the morning and afternoon and these turned out to be very informative with great emphasis on detail and execution of techniques, with fantastic training for side kicks and application of kicking.
The team comprised of four BTCB National Squad members Master Peter Johnson from Stoke , Chan Sau from London , Mitch Connolly from Milton Keynes , Angie Bailey from Scotland , Alex Tse from Manchester and Bethany Johnson from Stoke. All were to compete in the individual sections and two in the pair’s groups and the male team event.