End of Day 2 and just got back to our hotel after dinner, it’s now 21:22 and we started training at 9:00 this morning with Ed and Jess wanting to work through their top two katas for about 90 minutes. We started training outside the local indoor tennis courts and the lady running took pity on us and invited us to come in and use a court to train on. After our training we took a leisurely stroll along the seafront at Caorle and through the town searching for a restaurant that wasn’t a Pizzeria, not managed to find one yet though.  Everything was rather windswept after a stormy very early morning, thankfully the rain stopped, so we had the rest of the day dry.

 

After lunch we arrived in time to see the <13 children competing in the Kumite. It was interesting to watch the kids compete in headguard and body armour. Part of me (the old fashioned part) is sad that we are introducing it and part of me (the pragmatist) sees it as being useful to encourage wider participation for juniors at tournaments. Just hope it doesn’t become the norm for adults.

 

The future looks bright with some of the talent that we saw today. Overall the squad had a successful outing with several Golds, Silvers and Bronzes in both Kata and Kumite (Sorry I can’t remember exactly how many). We moved onto the cadets and juniors team events in both kata and Kumite. Little bit disappointing to see that we weren’t able to field a kata team at this event, maybe at the Europeans in London next October. 😎

 

There were some excellent Kata performed by the teams, a highlight for me, was the Italian junior male team, very veryKarate England, Karate Sport England good and for me, a probable winner in their category. The fighting was fierce with many of the young athletes giving it their all fighting for their Country, we had some real highlights with some great techniques, particularly from the Juniors, 18-20 year olds, (See video of Charlie Collins scoring with a superbly timed reverse punch for Ippon) with a wide variety of kicks, punches and throws.

 

The standard of refereeing was good and the competitors in the main were good sports fighting fairly, within the rules. I didn’t see too many injuries during the afternoon and evening and only one that was more serious being a broken nose from hitting a knee as the person was swept.

 

No medals yet for the >14s, but we’ve got eight (I think) teams through to the finals of the various Kumite divisions, lets see  if Ed and Jess can home with some medals from this. I’m quietly optimistic.

 

Back to the Sport Centre for an 8am start tomorrow with individual kata with Edward being in one of the biggest groups and up towards the start of it all, closely followed by Jess. Kumite to start around 12:30. Good luck team.