End of the first full day in Caorle in Italy for the Cadets and Junior’s World Karate Championships. Fair to say that the five of us are a little tired.

 

As a recap to yesterday, we arrived in the resort at around 12:30, quick lunch and then training at 2:30, all fighting related. Although we did do some individual Kata work after the main squad session had finished. The evening training was cancelled, because all the kids and most of the adults looked too tired to do anything sensible. I did spare a thought for the referees, an all day seminar on the rules. Mark, Geoff and Michael did a good job and are good for us to ask tough questions about the rules to provide some clarification.

 

An early breakfast at 7:30 for some of us, well at least 4 of us. Then meeting at 9:30 for kata practice working on Bassai Dai before the main squad session in the morning. Only a small amount of fine tuning and both were off working hard. We only focussed on this one, as it’s the first one for both of them to perform.

 

In the main squad session Phil Patrick from Oxford led a good warm up and went though some good partnerwork which covered reaction drills and speed drills with the team, both Ed and Jess are looking sharp. Ed was so confident that he decided to invent a new kick ‘the Winky Geri’ suffice to say it worked. Both times against me 8-( I’ve also have picked up some new ideas as well to test out.
Good team spirit with the team and lots of support from all the coaches and the parents present, I haven’t counted up exactly, but I think there’s around 80 of us from England. Nice to see from friends from Wales in the shape of Steve Wellington and Luke Howard and also from Northern Ireland with Dave Brashaw and his team.

 

As a team we then had to go and register , with 800 ish competitors from 21 Countries having to register over , the logistics to get them all weighed and verified as been the person on their passport was exhaustive to say the least. Finally after 2 hours of queuing we made it to the end and it was time for a quick lunch.

 

I attended the coaches session this afternoon and that was useful to attend to find out some of the future plans and also get some last minute reminders about the rules. Ian Cuthbert and Abdu Shaher will be getting the various category lists tomorrow morning, so we’ll find out who the competition is then.

 

Almost the last thing was the opening ceremony, was nice to see so many proud kids walking behind the flags of their respective countries. The acoustics in the hall made hearing the opening speeches difficult though but it was good to see Vic Charles from England being part of this . The opening ceremony rounded off with some demonstrations including one very good ballet performance and another, which although had good dancing, saw most of us surprised at the clothing worn by the youngsters performing.  A short demonstration of Iaido was interesting to watch and what I think was an Italian hypnotist who proceed to ‘hypnotise’ members of the Italian squad.

 

Finally time at 8:40 to start on dinner and then up to bed. Breakfast at 7:30, maybe even I’ll join them this time and then kata work at 9:00.

The World Championships start at 4:00pm tomorrow with the team events, here we go.