TKD Excel launches a third session of Tiny Taekwon-Do™ (a young childrens class) from January 2008 at the West Finchley venue.

This class runs on a Thursday at 4pm and is in addition to the Tuesday and Friday classes running at New Barnet. More info here.

The presentation for these Awards took place on Tuesday 18 December 2007, at the Lyonsdown Hall dojang.

This last class of 2007 was unusual in having several members of the Tiny Taekwon-Do class joining in. It was very impressive that they managed to keep up with the older students and they had as much fun as in their usual class!

The Student of the Year for 2007 is Daniel McCarthy, 6th Kup. He receives a certificate and engraved trophy.

Daniel has been enthusiastic about Taekwon-Do since he joined the school in 2005. He has real ability and the determination to achieve a great deal.

In gradings, at tournaments and in class, he performs at a high standard. He won the ITF England Championships 2006 for sparring and then succeeded in defending his title in 2007 - no easy feat at such a large competition!

All round self-defence skills and technical kicking ability are all at a good standard and improving all the time. With continued dedication to training, I am sure he will achieve much more in due course.

Congratulations to Daniel!

Student of the Year 2007 Daniel McCarthy (left)
Most Promising Student 2007 Sajith Rajaratnam

The Most Promising Student for 2007 is Sajith Rajaratnam, 9th Kup. He receives a certificate and engraved trophy.

Since he started training with his brother Vijith, Sajith has been an example of good behaviour and quiet hard work. He gets on with training and always tries his best in the drills and exercises.

To start training at 5 years of age in a standard Taekwon-Do class is a remarkable achievement and he has sustained regular training for almost 3 years. His natural ability at Taekwon-Do is really developing, particularly his balance, leg strength and technical precision.

Very well done to him!

TKD Excel launches a second session of Tiny Taekwon-Do™ (a young childrens class) from November 2007 at the New Barnet venue.

This class runs on a Friday at 4pm and is in addition to the Tuesday 4pm Tiny TKD class and the two mixed age group classes. More info here.

TKD Excel New Barnet Competitors:
Under 13's Yellow Belt: Vijith Rajaratnam, Alfie Huggard & Kamil Clarke.
Under 13's Green Belt: Ilja Titov & Daniel McCarthy.

Following closely from the top performances at the TKD Challenge Cup, the New Barnet squad were once again the ones to beat at this competition.

In what has to be a first at such a large and important event in the Taekwon-Do calendar, New Barnet won Gold, Silver and both Bronze medals in a single event! This was for U13 Yellow/Green sparring. This was fantastic for the competitors and shows the excellent results that are being achieved at this Taekwon-Do school.

Daniel once again dominated the sparring, winning Gold with no opponent being able to deal with his movement, timing and speed until the final where Ilja gave him a very strong challenge. Indeed, in the first half of the bout, Ilja was leading and Daniel had to work hard to win. After his recent performances, it is clear that there are no real challenges left for Daniel in the under-13's category and he will be entering the 13-17 group from next year.

In patterns, he was awarded Silver despite a very well performed Won-Hyo pattern. Whilst far from perfect, his stances were better than the opponents, as were his kicks, his sine wave, his power, his technical content, his breath control, his rhythmn and his balance. Apparently however, all this was not enough for him to win. Taekwon-Do it seems, can be a funny old game...

Ilja was back to his excellent composed self last seen in last year's London Open when he obliterated all his opponents in sparring. He is showing the maturity and ability of far more senior and experienced sparring competitors. He met the unstoppable Daniel in the final and the height and reach difference was too much for him to overcome in the end, but it was a very close fight and Daniel won due to his jumping punches. Ilja collected Silver.
Ilja continues to improve and his excellent discipline and natural ability in the ring will see him reach the highest levels of sparring if he continues to pursue it.

Vijith won Bronze with good movement and intelligence in his sparring and now speed of his techniques is what needs development. His patterns performance was not as good as at the London Open (where he won Gold) and so consistency needs to improve here.

Kamil performed a good pattern that will improve as he relaxes more and delivers more power. In sparring, he did well as usual winning Bronze after going out to Daniel in the semi-final.

Alfie did a solid patterns performance to win Bronze and he actually did significantly better than his opponent in the semi-final but was inexplicably denied the win. In the sparring, he had his work cut out being drawn with a taller opponent. He did well particularly with his side kicks, but he now needs to work on his movement and jumping punches to go to the next level.

TKD Excel New Barnet Competitors:
Under 13's Yellow Belt: Alfie Huggard
Under 13's Green Belt: Daniel McCarthy
13-17 Green Belt: Chris McCarthy

As usual, TKD Excel New Barnet competitors, although few in number, made a big impact. The medal haul was 5 medals.

Alfie won a patterns Gold for the first time - congratulations to him! In sparring, he won Bronze in a closely contested division against more senior opponents. He continues to impress with his positive attitude.

Daniel McCarthy won Gold in sparring after some tough rounds of fighting. He is regularly showing himself to be a cut-above the rest with good foot work and fast attacking sparring. He also won Silver in patterns but this could easily have been Gold but for several inexplicable hesitations.

Chris McCarthy won Silver in patterns against solid competition. In sparring, he performed very well as usual, with good movement and intelligent choices in technique. His fight in the quarter finals was admirable. After normal time and overtime, the judges couldn't seperate them, so it went to sudden-death. This means that the first point wins the fight.

Chris did everything right with excellent movement keeping himself out of range of the opponent. He then changed direction and launched forward into a lead hand jumping punch scoring 2-points before the opponent could counter. However, to our dismay, the judges called it for the opponent, failing to see Chris's initial score.

The video of the bout showed his win but it is the nature of events such as sparring that sometimes the wrong decision is made by judges with the best intentions. This was a particular shame because Chris severely broke his big toe during the overtime round and so he sparred the sudden death round carrying that injury. A very brave and impressive performance.

Daniel executes jumping high kick during Special Technique

The awesome threesome !

All medal winners

The seminar was conducted by the ITF Technical Committee: Master Hector Marano (8th degree – Argentina), Master Pablo Trajtenberg (8th degree – Argentina) and Master Willem Jacob Bos (8th degree – Italy).


All course attendees

There were approximately 150 Black Belts from 19 countries in attendance for this seminar held in an excellent Sports facility. ITF England was the largest contingent, represented by over 40 participants.

ITF England attendees

Other Masters present included Orello Ellis - president of ITF England and the head of the ETA; Donato Nardizzi of TKD Impact and Willy Van de Mortel from Holland.

Masters only !

The course included extensive practical training as well as in-depth theory from the three highly experienced Masters. Master Ellis also led part of the training, taking second degree black belts and below through hosin sul - self-defence.

4th degree and above

Detailed patterns theory, sparring drills, self-defence, umpiring rules and regulations, traditional sparring - all formed part of the course syllabus. Additionally, a banquet was held on the Saturday evening where course attendees could meet each other and the Masters less formally.

Sparring theory

The focus on the application of techniques was one of the most valuable parts of the theory delivered on the course. However, the whole course was informative and the depth of knowledge shown by the instructors was very impressive.

R. Adelagun delivers a friendly bandae dollyo chagi during drills with Swedish attendee, Mr Anders Holmberg

ETA members

More details and a list of all participants here.

Congratulations to the following students for passing their kup grading:

TKD Excel New Barnet Competitors:
Under 13's Yellow Belt: Daniel McCarthy, Vijith Rajaratnam, Ilja Titov, Alfie Huggard, Kamil Clarke & Jonathan Quinzo.
13-17 Yellow Belt: Chris McCarthy
Adult Green Belt: Kevin Manktelow

New Barnet competitors: (from rear left) Chris McCarthy, Kamil Clarke, Ilja Titov, Vijith Rajaratnam, Daniel McCarthy (from front left) Jonathan Quinzo, Alfie Huggard & Stephen Titov (from our Tiny TKD class!)


New Barnet students performed brilliantly on the day (see medal table below). The school won 9 medals with 8 entrants and also had a clean sweep of the Under-13 Yellow Belt patterns division - as we did at last years London Open! New Barnet students are proving themselves to be unbeatable in patterns competition!

Best performer of the day was Daniel McCarthy with Gold and Silver medals. Daniel's patterns are continually improving and his sparring was very accomplished as he breezed his way to a Gold medal. His brother, Chris McCarthy , had just moved up to the 13-17 year age group and was by far the youngest and lightest in his sparring division, so he did very well indeed to win sparring Silver and patterns Bronze.

Vijith Rajaratnam performed like a machine through the patterns rounds, producing a consistently excellent Dan-Gun pattern to earn a well-deserved Gold. Alfie Huggard had no trouble at all in demolishing all his sparring opponents to win Gold (and he had the largest group of competitors in the U13 division). Alfie's pattern performance was also very good and he reached the last 8 with Chon-Ji. Kamil Clarke fought his way to the sparring final to face his clubmate Daniel and won a good Silver, but also did well in patterns, winning through to the last 8.

Jonathan Quinzo performed a solid pattern and would have done even better than Bronze were it not for the other New Barnet students! Kevin Manktelow easily despatched his first sparring opponent before meeting his match in the semi-final with an accomplished fighter from Hogan's Institute. Ilja Titov had an unfortunate day despite doing very well on balance. His patterns were very good and he just barely missed out on a medal. Ilja was the defending champion for sparring from last year's London Open and so it was a great shame for him to not repeat his performance.

There are always lessons to be learned from each competition and the New Barnet students continue to go from strength-to-strength as they gain more experience.

** Official results here! **

Congratulations to:

Vijith Rajaratnam for passing to Green tag, 7th kup & Alfie Huggard for passing to Yellow belt, 8th kup!