AETF reporter
Norbert Érseki

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It was the second occasion when I was invited to the Holland Cup to the Netherlands. This particular event was extraordinary because it took place six weeks after the World Championships to be held in Jesolo, Italy, right on the weekend of the 60th birthday of Taekwon-do. (As it is told the name “Taekwon-do” proposed by our founder Gen. Choi Hong Hi was officially accepted on 11th April, 1955.)

For this rare constellation of events competitors from 16 countries arrived to Pijnacker. There were a few countries who attended the Holland Cup for the first time ever, some of them from surprisingly far away, like a competitor from Japan and from Russia.

I was able to talk to a lot of participants from different backgrounds and everyone felt content about the level and atmosphere of the competition. The most important part which most of them highlighted was, that despite this competition not being the biggest ever, but the hosts are so friendly and the competition itself is very well organized, so everyone feels great and wants to come back year by year. Even the “newcomers” expressed that they not only plan to return, but they will try to convince more friends from their clubs and country to follow them next year!

This is a quick interview with Mr. Tim Kool about their event, and I also made an interview with Master Willy van de Mortel - a few questions about the Holland Cup.

Interview with Master Willy van de Mortel

• Norbert Érseki: Have you brought a lot of competitors here?
  Master Willy Van de Mortel: On Saturday we had quite a lot of competitors, on Sunday a bit less, but in general, yes.

• NÉ: You have a special status here, you have your own school and you are also a national coach for NTN, Norway, right?
  MM: Yes. However I could not coach any of my students, as I was an umpire during the event. When I had time to walk around I was mostly looking for the competitors from Norway. The people from there came here from all the districts, so it was not my role to control them, but I felt it was my job to look at the people from the national team.

• NÉ: It is one of the last opportunities to see where they are before the World Championships. Do you feel satisfied with what you have seen?
  MM: There are things to do. I must look at the things from where we came, what is the goal, and where we are. In the beginning we made a big step, but now it will not be such in big steps anymore. There are still things that we have to do, but several members of the national team got good results here, that must give them a good boost, so they can feel that they are on the right track. There were other people who did not get good results, but I had good feeling of it – sometimes the personal feelings of their performances are more important than the results.

(A long interview with Master Mortel about his career as the now legendary coach will be published on AETF website soon, stay tuned!)

Interview with Mr. Tim Kool

• Norbert Érseki: How do you feel about this year’s Holland Cup in general?
  Tim Kool: I think it was a big success, it was a big challenge, we had a lot of competitors - almost 600. This meant a lot of team events - that’s why we decided that on Saturday we had eight squares and on Sunday five. This was new for us, we had more squares than in the last years, so we had to have more referees, and had to arrange everything a lot more for them - chairs, tables, equipment. It was quite a thing, because we had to arrange every extra thing 2 weeks upfront, after we’ve got the final applications.

• NÉ: So this means did not only have more referees, but more competitors and more teams, too.
  TK: The more competitors we have, the longer things take in the program, and also if you have more competitors, you will have more team events on the top of the individual categories, and you can’t do both on the same time, so the program with so many parallel squares is really hard to do.

• NÉ: This is why you had to change the schedule a bit during the day, right?
  TK: Yes. On Saturday on some squares we were faster than we thought, that’s why some competitors had to go for their individual categories and for the team event at the same time, so we decided to put all team events at the end of the day. It cost a little bit of time, but nobody had to stress to be there on the moment.

• NÉ: Do you expect even more competitors next year?
  TK: Well, we don’t really know, because we have changed the date this year to have it before the World Championship - normally we have it at the end of May, beginning of June, but now with the World Championship in Jesolo we decided to do it six weeks upfront, so people can see where they are for the Worlds. So we haven’t really decided yet if we are going to do it next year for the Europeans/Worlds or we would go back to the end of May again, so it is difficult to say if it will be bigger in numbers or not.

• NÉ: So do you think that the bigger number of competitors this year was due to the timing? That the event took place during the preparation time for the Worlds?
  TK: I think it was little bit of both. I think people are curious about the Holland Cup - that’s why people from Japan or Russia, for example, came. They participated for the first time - so it is still about curiosity, but also a lot of competitors came to see where are they for the Worlds on a high level event, so if things are wrong you can still do something about it in the next six weeks.

• NÉ: This year’s event was extraordinary in the manner that you had a really highly ranked VIP quest as Grandmaster Wim Bos has visited the Holland Cup.
  TK: Yes, it is good to see that we are quite young and unexperienced, and it is quite good to hear Grandmaster Bos really likes things what we do. We were really pleased that he could come over with his wife.

• NÉ: Have you got some ideas or hints from him as well?
  TK: Yeah, there are some ideas to discuss like the areas are smaller in the Netherlands, it was 6x6 instead of 8x8 meters - that’s a change in tactics also, but we did that to keep the fight stronger and continuous, so they need to fight more because it is smaller, especially with one round you want to do a lot of things. That’s why we had the smaller area, but Grandmaster Bos likes the official, bigger area. So we will have discussions and we will see what we are going to do with that. It is good to have discussions about the competitions. Probably we are going to change a little bit next year, but we change every year for the better. We also talk to other coaches and competitors to see what they really like. We organize the tournament, but we do not know everything, we need other people’s opinions.

• NÉ: Live streaming of the event is a trend now, you had it yourselves for the first time.
  TK: The live stream was pretty new - we are not really computer specialists, and everything was new. It did not work the way we wanted to. It needs to be closer to the area, and the sound must be different, but it works, so next year we can do it better.

Hoping to see everyone again next year!

Photographs from the event on the AETF Reporter Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/aetfreporter):
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.445518422273422.1073741833.313060342185898&type=3 - day 1, A-class competition
and
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.445563595602238.1073741834.313060342185898&type=3 - day 2, B-Class competition

For the statistics, numbers and results please check the official report of the Holland Cup on AETF’s website at
http://www.itfeurope.org/NL2015-02-12.html.