Final training for Sweden was completed this weekend with a tough session on Sunday in Doncaster. I am now ready and only going to be doing light training this week.

This week has been quite busy (already) as I have been to Durham and had an interview for Gilesgate Sport College and have been accepted on the Sports Course to do the BTEC Level 3 National Diploma for next year. The course I will be doing covers fitness training, coaching and sports development. It is a two year course and will include work experience in a sports environment.

I am going to be “live “on the Radio this week on Wednesday night at 7 pm on the Half Time Sports Show with the presenter Alan King on Bishop FM (Bishop FM 105.9). Scott and Simone are coming with me and Alan is going to ask us questions about Taekwondo and how we got started in Taekwondo and what our aims are. Will update you all next week about the radio and hopefully you can listen in as it is available on the internet as well as normal radio!

On Thursday night Scott and I will be travelling to Stansted Airport to catch the (Friday) early morning flight to Copenhagen. From Copenhagen we will then take the train to Malmo, travelling over The Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. We then catch a bus to Trelleborg. We are both weighing in on Friday and will be competing on Saturday. It is really strange as this will be my first competition of the year and normally I would have had a least one warm-up competition in the UK. The standard looks really high and there is 30 fighters in my group of who 17 have represented their country at major tournaments (either European or World Championships). I am still one of the youngest (in fact I am second youngest with only a Croatian younger than me). The players come from all over world and there are even members of the Chinese and Iranian National Team in my weight category.

Plans are moving forward for my Charity Night to be held at Bistro Fifty 3 in Spennymoor and we have the date confirmed as Sunday 27th March and have the menus and tickets. If anybody is interested in coming along please get in touch with either the restaurant or leave a message and we will get back to you. It should be a good night as the food is great at Bistro Fifty 3 and they are planning to do a quiz and hold a raffle. The money raised will be used to pay for training camps in preparation for the National Championships. Chris Thompson of Bistro Fifty 3 can be contacted on 01388 815200.

I will update you all when I get back from Sweden but really looking forward to competing in Sweden and will be working really hard to produce a couple of good performances and a podium finish.

Hello Everyone,

I have just returned from Sweden and have received my letter to offer the opportunity to be on the ASDA Sporting Chance scheme again.

Thank you ASDA and SportsAid for supporting me in 2011 and inviting me to join the scheme again. The sponsorship is fantastic and with the support of the ASDA Spennymoor Colleagues and Customers it enabled me to compete at additional overseas events last year and will also greatly help this year.

My target this year is to represent Great Britain at the Junior European Championships which will be held in Cyprus in October and I will be using my ASDA blog to update everyone body on my progress.

So thank you very much and I promise I will be giving 100% effort to achieve my goals and represent the ASDA Sporting Chance team in 2011.

Jamie

Hi All,

I played in my first competitive tournament of the year last weekend representing Chi Taekwondo of Spennymoor at the Trelleborg Open in Sweden. As I said in my last update, it is unusual for my first competition to be abroad but my first four competitions this year will be abroad and it is not looking very likely that I will compete in Britain this year other than at the national championships.

My first competition went reasonably well, I had a comfortable first round against a Danish National team player (6-1) and drew a Serbia National team player in the second round. I unfortunately lost on golden point (sudden death) after a hard 4-4 draw, it was a good fight against a player I have previously beaten, but I was using lots of different combinations and tactics in preparation for Holland and Germany. I was slightly disappointed to lose as I hit the player with a head shot and the referee give the player a standing count but the corner judges did not score the points. I think this was because of the angle of attack I used and it blindsided two of the three corner judges and we had no video replay and no protest card for my coach to ask for a video review. The referee apologised to my coach and me after the fight, but that sometimes happens in taekwondo especially if you don’t have electronic body armour and video replay, as the action is that fast that even the best referees struggle to keep up with play.

My brother, Scott also competed in Sweden and made the second round where he lost a close fight against the German National team player Tomic. Last year Scott played against Tomic and lost by a big margin. This year he matched Tomic score for score and was unlucky to lose, conceding a head shot in the last ten seconds for Tomic to win the fight.

Will keep you update thanks for the support.

The radio interview went brilliant with Alan at BishopFm and he is providing an update on my performances on his weekly sports show on a Wednesday Night.

Back from Holland after a tough match against Reza Nouri from Iran, the Junior World -55kg silver medallist. Unfortunately the result did not go my way and I lost the match 14 – 3.

It was the hardest opponent I have met so far in taekwondo and I had a brilliant first two rounds against him and held the score at 4-2 at the end of the second round.

The picture above shows me just failing to score with a headshot, I did connect to the head but the officials deemed I did not hit the Iran player with enough power!!! Also there was no video replay to have the video ref to review the headshot. If the headshot had scored I would have ended the second round 4-5 up instead of 4-2 down, but that is the margins at this level of taekwondo.

In the third round we exchanged a number of kicks and I was not connecting 100% on the electronic body armour and found myself 8-3 down with twenty seconds to go. I had a quick decision to make, either run the clock down and not really trying to do anything in the fight and talk about been unlucky and getting beat 8-3 by the Junior World Silver Medal winner or give it 100% and try for the knock out and win the match.

So I went for the KO (several times) and missed but this left me exposed and I conceded another two headshots, one that hit my shoulder (but looking at the video it was very close and would have needed a video replay to see it miss me) and another that caught me clean on the chin and ended up with a 14-3 loss.

After talking it over with my coaches, I decided to play in the NTC Nottingham Open the first UK event of the year. We decided to travel down on the Sunday morning rather than stay over on the Saturday night so after a 6:30 start we arrived in time for weigh in. It really was a family outing as Scott and Simone were playing and Mam was corner judging, Dad was driving and supporting as usual.

We also met our coaches and other players from Chi taekwondo at the weigh-in and met our training partners/friends from Scorpion taekwondo. Once weigh-in was over and we all made or weight groups we watched the event waiting for or fights.

First up was Simone playing at Cadet -44Kg. She had a bye to the semi-final and met a player who had previously beaten her but this time Simone reversed the result and won 6-3. Winning the match with a great headshot that rocked her opponent.

She then had a final against an experienced and older cadet who beat her 6-0 and Simone picked up a silver medal.

Scott (playing seniors -63Kg) was then next against a Korean who is a student at Bristol University and produced a great display and won 8-6. He then had his semi-final against a player from BTS Southampton and won 13-1 with the fight stopped on the 12 point (gap rule) early in the second round. He then faced club team mate Ben Shaw in the final and lost a close match 6-5 and pick up another silver medal.

I was competing at junior -55Kg and my matches followed Scott on a different ring. My first fight was against an awkward player from Manchester Aces who was probably 18 inches taller than me and I won comfortably 7-1. My semi-final was against a player from Spitfire Taekwondo Hampshire who we had never seen before who had won his quarter final with ease. I played a tight game for the first round and established a 4-0 lead, at the start of the second I stepped up my work rate and after a number of combinations the fight was stopped at 13-0 (12 point gap rule) after two kicks to the opponents head.

In the final I faced a player from Ultimate Taekwondo Liverpool. After a close fight ending 4-4 it went to sudden death (golden point – first to score wins the match) and I won on golden point and picked up my first tournament win of the year.

So a great weekend out with us all winning a medal and getting valuable ring time in preparation for the German Open in two weeks time.