“Where freedom of choice matters”

The WUKF World Championships this year were held in Odessa, Ukraine in June 2009.  The FEKO squad, led by Shihan Josh Johnson and accompanied by members of the FEKO Executive and FEKO Referees set off from various UK Airports and met together in Prague for the rest of the journey. Our first experience of Odessa was being greeted at the airport by girls in National costume bearing a somewhat potent drink and cake.  The women amongst us were presented with flowers but not be outdone our Chief Referee also managed to obtain a bunch somehow!

After a somewhat long wait in the Airport car park, we were whisked off to our accommodation.  Sadly not all the rooms met the minimum standard of hygiene and facilities which meant that a lot of re-arranging was necessary to ensure that everybody had a least somewhere to sleep.  The advantage however was that we were very close to the World Championships stadium. As with anything else diversity brings people together and that’s what it did. The team were in high spirits, were gelling as a group and remained positive and motivated throughout the stay.  

On Wednesday and Thursday the team took the opportunity to train with former World Champion Christopher Pinna.  The opening ceremony on Thursday evening was punctuated with demonstrations from senior karateka and were well received.  One of the most heartwarming sights was to witness that the only female referee out of the 60 plus referees was our very own Maria Kelly-Fursdon and she showed throughout the competition that she was in no way phased by this.

In the completion itself Mandie Read secured first place in the Veterans kata and then a bronze medal in the veterans fighting.  Daniel Read secured a place in Sunday’s final edging out our own Stewart Tompkins for that place. Although they performed creditably progressing through a couple of rounds both the ladies and men's teams were then beaten by eventual finalists.

In the individual events all competitors gave of their very best with Mandie Read showing that age is no barrier to competing by holding her own against much younger competitors.  Both Helen Hibberd and Amy Dyde came up against very experienced fighters, including former World Champions and although being beaten showed that it won’t be long before they are standing on the World Podium.

Stewart Tompkins as always showed his true mettle as a fighter narrowly missing out on a medal place in Shobu Ippon, while Wayne Tompkins and Howard Taylor  showed just how strong and fierce competitors they are with Howard just being beaten by the eventual finalist in the individual kumite.

On finals day Daniel was up against some brilliant kata exponents and achieved a creditable 7th place. To watch his kata right click the object below and click ‘play’.

Although they were obviously disappointed the team recognised that they had learnt a lot from this competition and without exception all stated how proud they were to have been selected to represent FEKO at this event.

In addition to our medal successes our own referees Denis Robinson and Maria Kelly-Fursdon achieved World Kata Referee status.  FEKO now has four world class referees and no doubt, under Robert Phillips support, will soon have some more.

WUKF WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2009 - ODESSA, UKRAINE

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