September 15, 2014
4th Weight World Championship was held in town Durban (Republic of South Africa) on 6-7 September 2014. Ukraine was represented by 12 fighters and 3 of them represent Ukrainian Kyokushinkaikan Karate Federation, namely: Gavrylyuk Andriy, Zvonyk Dan and Leshchuk Olga. Our team was accompanied by head of the board shihan Volynets Dmytro and executive director Tereshkevych Vitaliy. Altogether there were 160 fighters from 19 countries. Organizational matters of the tournaments met all the requirements for competitions of such a high level. It was held at the Durban Arena, and the opening of the tournament was honoured by South African president Jakob Zuma and the minister of sports of SA Republic.
All the fighters have shown high qualification. Zvonyk Dan was reckoned among 8 better fighters in his weight category, as he had lost only in 1 fight according to referee’s decision. Gavrylyuk Andriy has got 3rd place in weight category 70-kg. He was able to become the winner, but hand injury during tameshiwari prevented him from winning the gold medal. By the way, organization of tameshiwari could be better, as some sportsmen lacked boards for breaking, therefore breaking results were ignored in judging of contentious performance in kumite. And Leshchuk Olga has beaten all her opponents and won the gold medal. “We were eager to get into the final to meet with Australian fighter, who had stopped Olga 2 years ago at the International tournament in Japan. Now Olga has equaled the score and became the winner!” says the trainer Volynets Dmytro. “I am pleased with the altogether results. They have proved that our trainings and efforts were not in vain.” – resumed the shihan.
After the tournament they organized a traditional training under Kancho’s guidance, followed by dan-test.
Our fighters are pleased with their results. They had enough time for rest, e.g. walking around the city and even swimming in the ocean (one has to have courage to go into the ocean there, as it is believed to be overcrowded with sharks). Though, there were some nervous moments, too. Except already mentioned tameshivary, there were problems with bullets and some other questions, that were solved quickly.
Once again, we congratulate our fighters with high results and wish them to have high results in the future, so they would represent our country with dignity.
