TU11 on Latvian taekwondo mats

As September turned into October, taekwondo G1 competitions were contested in Riga, the heart of the Baltic States. There was a long row of flags from different countries on the wall as an indication of the internationality of the player representation. Taekwondo athletes set off this time with the strength of four athletes. They fell on Saturdays Plum Duplicator, Severi Sarala and Jenna Partanen, Tuikku Holopainen on Sunday.

Mr. Plum opened the game by taking on Italy's much taller Alexander Oberhofer in the cadet boys' under 49kg division. Plum put up a great fight, but the bigger Italian got the bad balance of Plum, who was well involved in the situation, thanks to his mass superiority, and was able to continue with the second kick too often by forcing the armor points through Plum's protection. The final result 3-17 tells mainly about the size difference between the boys, technically and tactically we were very involved in the match. Despite the loss, Plum gets a bronze medal.

Severi, who broke the lower limit of his weight class (63-68 kg) next, suffered the same fate against a clearly bigger Lithuanian, Valciukas Mantvyda. Severi collected himself nicely from the small "shock" caused by the difference in power at the beginning and started to challenge the guy for real. After two sets, the score was 16-3 for Lithuania. Severi went on to win the last round and was able to build and take advantage of a few nice points. The final result of 9-20 told mainly about the difference in size and strength in this match as well.

The third competitor of the day, Jenna, competed in her normal -67 kg category. Jenna, who had been ill the previous week, was a little unsure of her condition, but was able to perform well in her routine in her first match against Yana Piletskaya from Belarus and won the match 19-7. In the second match, the Karelian girl, Ekaterina Derbeneva, who in the end narrowly missed silver in the series, and who also enjoyed her time in Finland for a long time, came up against her. The match with Katja was evenly matched in terms of situations and general impression, but Katja's excellent protection kept Jenna's good kicks scoreless. Accordingly, Jenna's protection was bad in places this year, so the points of an apparently even match poured inconsolably into Katja's column. The points 1-12 left on the board tell in a harsh way the importance of protection and finishing in an otherwise even match, even though the coach, Teemu Heino, took the first point losses partly on his own. The selected starting pattern did not work as expected this time.

We went to Sunday with the strength of one taekwondo athlete. Tuikku traveled Iiro Suorelan kiparoma's department on the way to Nurmijärvi, by the end of the pump the same journey, but with the rest of the TU team returning to Finland already on Sunday afternoon. Based on the last meeting in Poland, it had already been agreed in advance that Iiro would coach Tuikku as well, but due to overlapping matches, Teemu ended up sitting on Tuikku's bench, when the same Belarusian, Vitaliya Lazuta, who managed to beat Tuikku in Poland, also lined up against him. Like our other youngsters, Tuiku also had an opponent clearly bigger than him. Tuikku fought well, but failed to find a way to get close enough in the first two rounds. Many situations were like a repeat of Plum's match the day before. In the third set, Tuiku managed to lighten his number one hit in order to be able to make follow-up technique from a good balance close enough. This spawned one successful main and one armor hit, as well as a good amount of quality attempts that were only unreimbursed by bad luck. However, after a good third set, the final result is 13-5 for Belarus. Despite this, the bronze medal is still around Tuikku's neck due to the small series.

Overall, the club's performance was satisfactory in Kouts' eyes. In the statistics, two bronze medals and only one match win seems underwhelming, but because none of the lost matches were bad overall. There were many good elements in Jenna's lost match and the defeats of the youth division came after a hard fight against clearly bigger opponents. Sure, there were ingredients for much better things, but this was by no means a disaster of any kind. Heads up and through training towards new competitions!

Finally, I would like to mention the well-functioning club cooperation with Nurmijärvi. Apart from Tuiku's travel and accommodation arrangements, there were also a lot of synergies in working together. Weighings, training, movement and Meal arrangements went much more flexibly together, with a "our club goes its own way" attitude. So a big thank you not only to my own excursion (in addition to the competitors Katri Sarala and Sami Kopisto), also for the Nurmijärvi pump and Iiro.