AETF reporter
Norbert Érseki

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The Hungarian National Championships were held on the second weekend of March in the small town of Makó. The place was extraodinary not just because it was a remote location for most of the Hungarian clubs but also because the building of the event’s venue was designed by the world famous Hungarian architect, Imre Makovecz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Makovecz). This gave a spell-binder atmosphere to the event.

The event was special not just because of the Sports Hall, but also because there were many new features in this event. The organizing team has created an electronic pointing system which they plan to present to AETF to get accepted on an international level. There was also a rarely seen event at the Nationals this year: there was a brick breaking competition as well in memory of Sándor Demeter - a black belt from the organizer’s team who died a few years ago.

Thirty teams participated with more than 300 competitors from across Hungary. The organizers had a firm grip on the event: it had much more strict rules as usual, but this meant professional leading and conducting.

Master László Harmat opened the event at the official Opening Ceremony. He expressed his gratitude towards the organizers for this high level competition.

The Nationals started with all age divisions together on Saturday (children, cadet, junior, and senior). This went rather quickly and well. Most of the individual sparring, individual and team pattern categories were finished by the end of the day. In the evening there was a gala event together with the Opening Ceremony where the finals for the most interesting categories were held. To mention a few interesting ones: traditional sparring - which was won by the world-famous Krisztián Pataky-Péter Szász pair, the IV-VI. dan individual pattern with Péter Poós (V degree) winning against Gábor Szalay (V degree), or the -57kg men’s sparring won by Norbert Rizmayer or -78kg men’s sparring with Dániel Péter Zsarkó, getting the gold medal.

See individual IV-VI. dan pattern final Péter Poós vs Gábor Szalay on youtube: http://youtu.be/JYu86VJOtBQ.

But the evening was not over, the brick breaking event was just ahead. It gave goose bumps to the ones watching the event, it was really extraordinary as it is not part of the official events, however it was really spectacular.

On Sunday the competition continued with the remainder of the sparring events and the team sparring, and after all other divisions, the special techniques and power breaking events. In some categories, where there were more candidates for the European Championships than the allowed, the were a selector events were held. This was all the remaining open places in the National Team were decided upon.

The overall result was in favor for team Sasok this year, the second best team was Tápió-Monor and the third place went to team TKD Spirit.

Special thanks for the organizer clubs Makó TKD and Club Dynamic from Szeged as well as the outstanding job of our umpires with the new system.