Yates steps up a class

BY DANIEL RICHARDSON

Alicia Yates will be stepping up in class when she competes in the senior division for the first time at the Taekwondo World Championships in Argentina in November.

Yates has been to two junior world championship events and won a string of medals, but at 20 she was past the junior cut-off age which is 18.

She was one of nine Palmerston North competitors recently selected in the New Zealand squad which included her younger sister Anna.

Eight are from the Palmerston North Taekwon-Do Academy, making up around a fifth of the New Zealand team, while Annaliese Burr was a member of the West End club.

Yates said she was looking forward to the challenge of competing in the senior competition.

"It'll be interesting," she said. "Kind of exciting, just to see the step up and just to see what the level is like.

"It's just more the experience level than anything else. But to be honest, some of the juniors are amazing and could compete as a senior anyway."

Yates, a radiography student at UCOL, said people in New Zealand don't know how popular it is overseas, particularly in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Taekwondo competitions involve four sections; power, sparring, patterns and specialty. Sparring is the only form of competition which was contested at the Olympics and involves one-on-one combat.

Patterns are judged on one's technical ability to perform movements and power was a section for breaking a large number of boards.

Specialty involved breaking boards but with a greater focus on technique with the ability to jump and break the object being scrutinised.

This year the junior and the senior competitions are running at the same time and 13-year-old Anna would be competing in the junior power breaking section, an event in which her sister won a gold medal at the junior world championships in Honduras in 2006.

Anna, a Year 9 student at Palmerston North Girls' High School, said she was ecstatic to get the opportunity to represent New Zealand.

"I was just really happy and surprised," she said.

"I sort of thought that I did have the spot because I was one of the three people that got all the breaks, but I was quite young."

She said it was a great chance to follow in her sister's footsteps because Alicia was the reason she took up the sport.

"It makes me really happy because it gives me a sign that I've got a chance because my sister did well."

The New Zealand team will be managed by their father Mike Yates.

Palmerston North Taekwondo competitors and the events they are competing in at the world championships in Argentina.

Senior:

Amanda Cleland, 25. Individual power, hyperweight sparring. Team power, sparring and patterns.

Kane Baigent, 21. Middleweight sparring. Team power, specialty and sparring.

Alicia Yates, 20. Team power, specialty, sparring and patterns.

Estelle Speirs, 21. Middleweight sparring. Team specialty and patterns.

Nikki Galpin, 21. Individual specialty, heavyweight sparring. Team specialty, sparring and patterns.

Sandi Galpin, 25. Individual Fourth Dan patterns. Team power, specialty, sparring and patterns.

Junior:

Mitchell Craig, 14. Lightweight sparring.

Anna Yates, 13. Individual power. Team power.

Annaliese Burr, 16. Individual power, lightweight sparring. Team power.

Sparring and patterns teams have six members, specialty and power have four for women and six for men.

 

- © Fairfax NZ News