Slovenia Open 2008

2008 Slovenia Open FEB 23 2008

Slovenia Part 3

Friday arrived and we were not involved in any training. Generally it was a rest day apart from some last minute brushing up on patterns.

Master van de Mortel arrived around mid day after a 12 hour drive from the Netherlands. He duly held a patterns training before retiring to get some rest. After that Hong Looi took over and gave further assistance. This training was all held in the hotel carpark.

All in all, Friday was a laid back day. After dinner, an early night. All teams and competitors have arrived and we now await the tournament tomorrow.

Up early to breakfast on Saturday and walk across the road to the stadium. The patterns are held first as is normal and Amy is first up. She performs well and progresses through to the final which she also wins. A great start and we now wait for Shane and Gary who are also competing. Shane makes it to the semi final and secures a 3rd place. Gary is in 2nd Dan patterns and also contests the final securing second place.

Patterns finish around 11.00am and it is now straight into sparring. Amy is again up first in the -60kg division. She has a buy in the first round, then defeats competitors from Poland and Slovenia before meeting Croatia in the final. She lost in a close match, but we are delighted with this early success. Master van de Mortel has been her second the whole time and is pleased with the result, but also has things for Amy to work on.

Shane is next away in the -70 division and is up against Slovenia in his first match. Shane is over excited and is clearly on top of his opponent. He does incur two deductions in the first round and needs to pull back. This he does and takes out the match. After a stern talking to from Master van de Mortel , he then takes out his next opponent, also from Slovenia. This puts him in to the semi final where he has an epic bout against Croatia. This is hugely fought and after three rounds we are at sudden death. During this we observe a corner judge from Croatia conversing with Croatian supporters and confirming with them that their fighter has scored. Every time the referee calls for a decision, he supports the Croatian fighter. The first three times he is the only judge to make any decision and we are seriously doubting his neutrality. On the fourth call it goes to Croatia, but Shane has been huge and provides us with trophy number five.  Again, Master van de Mortel is happy with his efforts, but gives advice on where he needs to improve.

Kim is up in the -50 division where she is up against a Croatian opponent. She competes well against an opponent who is clearly more experienced. However, she will gain from this and at the end is happy with her effort.

Ross was up against a huge Croatian in the +70 division. I would estimate his weight between 90 – 100 kg and is not afraid to use his power. Ross is being seconded by Tomaz Barada and competed well despite the size differential. Croatia take it, but Ross can be proud.

Gary is our last junior to compete and he is in the -63 division. Again, his opponent is from Croatia. It is a battle royal from start to finish. The Croatian is very aggressive and Gary fights fire with fire. It all makes for excellent viewing and although the win goes to Croatia, both fighters are showing bruises and marks afterwards.

Our last competitor is Kane who is our only person in the Senior competition. He is in the -63 division against Poland with Master van de Mortel as his second. This is another high paced match and it is clear that the decision will be close. It is in fact a draw and we are in to the third round. This is a repeat of the first two rounds and we find ourselves again in sudden death. Both Kane and Poland go close, but no decision. The third call and I was not concerned as the kick had hit Kanes back. However the judges saw it differently and the result is to Poland. Master Lan who was standing next to me also believed it was a tough call, but this happens.

This brings our competition to a close, but we are all on a high with the days success. We depart at the end for dinner before returning for the finals.

The night kicked off with us supporting Roy who is a student of Master van de Mortel in 4th Dan patterns final. He looks to have it in the bag, but makes a critical mistake in the final pattern which denies him the win.

First sparring match is a classic, Female -52 and it is Bianca Barada from Slovenia vs Katya Solovey from Ukraine. Bianca had loaned her gloves to Amy and when returned told Amy that she had given them good luck. This may have been true, as although she lost the first round, came back in the second using her sidekick to devastating effect. The decision goes to Bianca to the local crowds delight.

Another highlight was Hong Looi making it to the -71 final where he is up against Gregor Rudolph from Slovenia. Rudolph is the reigning champion and the obvious crowd favourite. However, Hong has Master van de Mortel as his second who has plenty of knowledge about the Slovenians. It is a great match and Hong takes it out. I have known him a long time and have never seen him in better form. There was also another match on amongst the seconds with Tomaz being the second for Rudolph.

After the tournament, it was back to the hotel to change before heading off for the party at Tomaz gym. I strongly adhere to the what goes on tour stays on tour line, so I will simply state that Gary and Kane had a particularly lively time. Leave it at that.
It is now Sunday and I am typing the report at Ljubljana airport. For me it has been great and not just because of the fact that we had some success in terms of trophies. Tomaz and Bianca have been fantastic providing us with all the hospitality we could ask for. Also Master van de Mortel for driving all that way to support our effort.

Now it is a whole heap of flying to do. Hope you enjoyed the updates and we will see you all soon, hopefully at the Oceanias.

Regards,

Greg Skinner

REPORT FORM MR GREG SKINNER

Hi all,

After we concluded the Wednesday training with Tomaz, it was back to the hotel to shower and change. We then walked in to the central part of Maribor for lunch and generally explore.

In the evening it was back to the gym for our third training session. This time it was with the ITF club where the training was again sparring focused. While we were there Tomaz advised that his wife Bianca would be coming out of retirement to contest the -52kg female sparring division. Bianca was the World Champion in this division at the 1999 and 2001 World Championships. Her reason for entering the Slovenia Open this time is that the current World Champion, Katya Solovey from Ukraine has also entered. This has given Bianca the motivation to enter in the hope that she can get to compete with Solovey. If it happens, the stadium will explode!!!

We had dinner this time in a pizza restaurant close to the hotel that Sam, Renee and myself had discovered in previous visits, Cu Cu by name. An interesting evening spent eating good pizza amongst partying, drunken Slovenians none of whom spoke English.

Thursday morning was our second private session with Tomaz and our forth for the tour. This session was again intense, but Tomaz provides a lot of motivation all the time. We had a scare when Ross went down in the last few minutes of the session with what looked like a seriously sprained ankle. Ice was immediately applied and Ross looks like he will be able to compete, but his ankle will be heavily strapped.

At the end of the training, we had a mini competition on a wall climber that Tomaz has had installed. I am pleased to advise that I beat Shane in this event. Shane will of course contest this view, but who cares. Things became worse for Shane on the taxi ride back to the hotel. Our cab was a BMW driven by an attractive young lady much to the lads delight. Shane lost the race to the front seat, which was won by ………………..

Back to hotel and then off to a burger bar for lunch. Some of the crew then went back into the city while some just crashed in their room to chill out. Hong Looi arrived to the hotel this afternoon with his partner Sabina. They will both be competing on Saturday, representing Malaysia and Ireland respectively. Competitors from Finland also arrived today.

We returned to the gym that evening to join the kickbox class that we trainined with on Tuesday evening. This was the fifth session since arriving and as you can imagine some of the group were feeling the effects. However, Shane, Amy and Kim gave it a go with Hong and Sabina also training.

Ross is now walking on his ankle and we are more confident that he will compete.

Dinner after training, then bed.

Friday is when all teams arrive and weigh in will be held. We will have a better idea of the competitors at that stage. Will provide another report tomorrow.

REPORT FORM MR GREG SKINNER

Hi all,

As some of you may be aware, a group of ITFNZ students have travelled to Slovenia to compete in the 2008 Slovenia Open.

The students competing are,

Kane Baigent
Ross Black
Shane Black
Amy Reeder
Gary Sawyer
Kim Sawyer

Along with Suzy Fisher, Sharyn Black, Dave Sawyer and myself.

We departed on Saturday 16th from Auckland and flew to Los Angeles where we had a six hour transfer between flights. The highlight in LA was the Superman act by the lads on the travelator ( wait for the photos ).

Then we were back on another flight from LA to Munich for another 11 hours. Needless to say we were grateful to get off the airplane. Caught the train in to Munich where we are staying in the central part of the city, located the hotel and crashed. Dinner that night was in one of the beer halls eating local sausage and saurkraut, ( and beer , again wait for the photos )

Monday arrived and the rest of the crew spent the day exploring Munich while I visited the Top Ten Head Office. The weather is certainly cold, below freezing at night, but is generally fine through the day. That evening and it was off to another beerhall for dinner ( dont get the wrong impression here ) before heading back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning and it was back to the airport, after initially getting on the wrong train, to catch the flight to Slovenia. We were met on arrival and taken straight to Tomaz Baradaś gym in Maribor. This was a moment that the kids had been waiting for as Tomaz was there to greet us. We then were taken to our hotel to check in before returning to the gym to join in with a kickbox class that evening. The kids had a great experience training with Tomaz and also Bianca Barada who spent a lot of time with Amy. After the class we all bought several Tomaz Barada t-shirts and then were dropped off at a local restaurant for dinner, finally walking back to the hotel around 11.00 pm.

It is now Wednesday and we are having a private session with Tomaz. It has been a good, intense session finishing with each member having a round of sparring with Tomaz inside a small 5 x 5 boxing ring. Character building stuff!!!!!

That brings you up to date. Will send more info later on.

Final comment, definition of frustration is typing a report on a Slovenian keyboard.

Caio for now,

Greg

The Slovenia Open is one of the leading ITF Taekwon-Do tournaments that attracts many top competitors from Europe and all over the world.

This year Top Ten NZ is offering a package trip for interested ITFNZ members to experience training sessions with the legendary Tomaz Barada as well as compete in this prestigious tournament. The tournament is open to all grades and provides an excellent opportunity to those who wish to experience international competition at the highest level. It is highly recommended for any student who is considering competing in sparring at future World Championships.

The package cost is $4,500 and includes the following:

• All airfares
• All accommodation
• Training with Tomaz Barada
• Entry to the tournament

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Kiwis in Slovinia 2007 & 2006