Locals Show Well At Commonwealth Taekwondo

(Submitted)

The 4th Commonwealth Taekwondo Championships was held in Winnipeg on November 21-23.

There was participation by Olympian athletes at this event. The quality was extremely high. There were 240 athletes from the Commonwealth at the event. The event was held at the prestigious MTS Centre.

Australia has an extremely strong team but this year England was awarded the top team award. The small city of Yortkon was well represented at this event as they had athletes and coaches that were selected to represent Canada. Kira Schaab in Juniors and Skye Ashcroft in Seniors finished 4th at the event and just short of the medals. However Autumn Ashcroft finished strong to capture the bronze medal in Adult Female feather black belt. Autumn had a strong match against the gold medalist losing to a score of 5 to 4.

The greatest achievement was from Rae Ashcroft who captured gold in the junior female light middle weight division. She used Graeme Mitchell's (her coach) advice well and even though she has a chronic injury that negated the use of her strong right leg attacks, managed to go through the whole event undefeated. Yorkton, Saskatchewan should be extremely proud of our Commonwealth Gold medalist Champion.

Yorkton's Jesse Mitchell competed in the pattern division. He finished in fourth place and out of the medals.

Susanne Mitchell was present as an International Referee. She was chosen by the referee committee and highest world ranked international referees as the best female referee at the event. Susanne has a quiet pride in her strive to be better. She will modestly tell you she is working at improving every aspect. In her international referee world there is no room for error in referee game management and judgement as the athletes careers are on the line.

This is an very high honour and goes to show that a very high level of excellence in all aspects of the Taekwondo Programs in our small corner of the world. This championship is used by the Commonwealth Taekwondo Union as a vehicle to move Taekwondo into the full Commonwealth Games.

The 5th Commonwealth Taekwondo Championships are scheduled to be in New Dehli, India January 20-24, 2011.

Master Mitchell is managing the Commonwealth Taekwondo exchange training Camp from November 24 - 29. The camp includes strength training experts and lectures on Nutrition, recovery, mental training and DartFish video analysis. The Canadian Taekwondo Olympic Team effectively used this video analysis at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to capture their silver medal success. The camp also consists of team training with the Australian, New Zealand, Welsh, and Northern Ireland team members.