Newsletter 1/2011 Unexpected Meeting in Belgium
On the last weekend before Christmas Mr. Adrian Byrne V Dan from Ireland and Ms Annick Van Driessche V Dan from Belgium had an unexpected meeting at the Flanders Day of the Trainer in Ghent. Ms. Van Driessche with colleagues from ITF Belgium were attending the one day conference to learn and update their knowledge with more than 1800 sports coaches from all sports in the Flanders region. Mr Byrne, meanwhile, was attending the European Day of the Trainer, representing Ireland as part of a delegation of Coaching Experts from the sports ministries of the European Union countries. Together with the other European Delegates, Mr Byrne was discussing European sports policy with regard to talent identification and selection, alignment of coaching qualifications with educational qualification frameworks and the career pathways for retiring high performance sports people.
Through pure chance the organisers of both events (BLOSO, the Belgian sports administration) had decided to begin both conferences at the same venue, the very impressive Topsport athletics arena. Perhaps even more unlikely was that the two Taekwon-Do practitioners might find each other in this crowded venue. This is what happened however, and they were able to have a brief talk on the position of ITF Taekwon-Do within sport generally in their countries and to look forward to the upcoming World Championships in Wellington, New Zealand.
Time did not allow for a longer discussion, but we hope there will be many future opportunities to meet and discuss Taekwon-Do within the wider sports coaching community in the future.
