28 Oct 2013

NZ 3rd at Taekwondo World Champs

6:39 pm on 28 October 2013

New Zealand has finished third at the Taekwon-Do World Championships in Benidorm, Spain with eight gold medals, seven silver and 11 bronze in its total of 26 medals.

New Zealand was the defending champion nation, but found itself beaten by the slightly larger teams of Poland (13 golds) and Ireland (10 golds), although the Kiwis finished ahead of the strong Russian and German teams who had eight and six golds respecitively.

Gold medals for New Zealand in the final day of competition came in popular senior men's pre-arranged sparring as Mark Trotter(Auckland) and Australian-based Aucklander, Carl Van Roon won the title.

The senior female special technique team also won gold with the team of Estelle Speirs(Palmerston North), Haley Caley(Auckland) and Mellissa Temperley(Counties Manukau) winning her second gold of the tournament after earlier taking out the gold in the Patterns the previous day.

Levin's Morgan Searle added to the gold tally with victory in the Junior individual female power category.

Toni Moki (Auckland) won a silver on the final day in the senior individual female 3rd Dan Patterns, Kristy Leong (Auckland) finished second in the senior individual female power and the women's senior team Patterns also won silver.

In other notable results Speirs came close to retaining her under 50kg female sparring title, falling just short in winning a bronze medal to follow up from her gold at the previousWorld Championships in Wellington two years ago.