|
 Shuhari-Kai’s Alex Sell met up with his EKF England Squad compatriots at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday 12th February 2008, flying out to Italy to compete in the
35th Junior & Cadet European Championships. The squad arrived in Trieste early evening giving them enough time to settle into their rooms and prepare for dinner. The following two days consisted of training sessions at the Palatrieste Stadium, venue of the
championships where they squad were put through their paces and their fighting/Kata skills honed in preparation for the 3 day tournament.
The first day’s events were the Junior male and female individual categories. Each event was held to the semi-finals where the category finals were showcased on a centre-mat feature which followed the Championship Opening Ceremony. A
handful of athletes from each country (maximum 8) were selected to bear their national flag and parade in the arena during the ceremony and Alex had the honour to be part of this elite group. Each country, announced in alphabetical order, were paraded into the arena and lined
along side each other with Italy, being the host country, announced last.
Alex fought in the Male Cadet U70kg category on Saturday at around 11:00am. Alex faced a Bulgarian opponent in his opening round match and Alex felt confident of progressing through the rounds. Alex started brightly dominating the early
exchanges and taking the fight to his opponent. Alex threw a Chudan Gyakuzuki punch to his opponent’s stomach while his opponent countered with a Jodan ‘over-the-top’ Gyakuzuki in reply. One flag OU (blue for Alex) but with no other flags the referee went red instead and
awarded a point to Alex’s opponent. Alex continued to press forward, this time to level the score. The Bulgarian was beginning to try and tie up the match but received a category 1 warning for holding. Soon after, a neat Chudan Gyakuzuki followed by another almost instantaneous
Gyakuzuki punch saw Alex finally on the score sheet pulling the score back level again at 1-1. Alex continued to push forward looking to take the lead but got caught in the face as his opponent received his first category 2 warning for excessive contact. With about 30 seconds
left on the clock Alex went in for another Chudan Gyakuzuki as his opponent went for a simultaneous Jodan Gyakuzuki punch which scored first. The referee awarded another point to AKA (red) leaving Alex behind on the scores once again. Alex went for it in the last 30 seconds and
threw all manner of techniques, and save for receiving a category 2 contact warning, time simply ran out before he managed to score against his opponent with a clean technique.
It was a disappointing result in terms of the score but a very pleasing performance. Alex was the youngest squad member having just turned 16 years old in January and although this was his first outing as a Cadet competing in the 16-17
year old section, he showed no nerves and looked comfortable competing at this level. Alex dominated and controlled the fight and felt bitterly disappointed at not securing the win but you couldn’t take anything away from his opponent who fought his game well. At this level
there are no easy rounds, each competitor is up against his or her equivalent, another country’s national champion. Although he didn't win a medal, he represented England in a major championships which he was really proud to do. The squad did themselves proud and came away with
one silver (Tom Gibbins – Male Junior U75kg), and two bronze medals (Katie Hurry – Female Junior +60kg and Ashleigh Kenny – Female Cadet Kata).
|