Newsletter 3/2015 
The 30th Senior and 21st Junior AETF Taekwon-do European Championships in 2015 took place in Motherwell, Scotland on 22-25th October. Motherwell is a small, hospitable town in the close area of Glasgow. The location of the event was quite an unusual choice. The arena for the competition was the Ravenscraig Sports Complex, which is a huge sport arena with a lot of facilities. The arena was the location of the Commonwealth Games in 2014, which is like a small Olympic Games for the past member countries of the British Empire, who are still keeping up the tradition. The arena where the actual competition was held was a large area covered with artificial grass, so the tatami mats were laid on a wooden installation.
The registration took place on Wednesday, the teams were arriving continously, having trainings after the actual weigh-in in the warm-up area, while the other side of the arena was getting prepared for the upcoming competition by the organizers. The arriving teams have found themselves in a huge sports complex with a lot of space to move around and in between the rings, which was quite unusual on the following competition days.
The competition started on Thursday, with the Opening Ceremony. The line-up for the teams was led by a traditional Scottish band playing on drums and bagpipes. The last team to line up was the hosting Scottish team, led by a handicapped yellow belt student, which was a very nice gesture of the organizers. The actual competition started with the pattern categories (along with some special techniques). The competition had 520 competitors registered. The tournament had a lower number than the average of the previous years (last year in Italy we had 560 competitors), so with the large arena on the first day felt more empty than usual. as the categories were commencing, and with the supporters getting warmed up for the task, with the cheering and shouting, the supporters and team members had made a nice atmosphere for the upcoming days.
The competition was well organized, with a few bits and pieces of some setbacks, but it was properly managed either by the AETF Tournament Committee (with Master Alex Dunbar, Master James Tjin-a-ton and Mr. Attila Solti present) or the Organizing Committee of the event (lead: by Mr. John Mcilvaney, Ms Gillian McIlvaney and Mr David Condi).
The tournament had a lot of guests of honour including grandmasters and masters, such as: GM Pablo Trajtenberg, president of ITF, Master Paul Weiler vicepresident senior of ITF, GM Tom MacCallum, Master Juan Ferrando, general secretary of ITF, GM Williem Jacob Bos, director of ITF, Master Tadeusz Loboda, president of AETF, and a lot of honourable members of the ITF and AETF boards.
The overall category was won again by the Polish team, they had an excellent performance again, winning 21 gold medals. They were followed by the Norwegian team of NTN and Italy, both winning in 7-7 categories, however NTN had finished second with the number of silver medals gained.
Another important event took place in Scotland during the competition, which was the AETF Congress for the member countries of the European federation. Apart from the regular points discussed, the Congress discussed the members of the upcoming years competitions, deciding to hold a European Cup in 2016 in between the European Championships (Finland, on the turn of April to May) and the World Cup (Hungary, in the middle of October). The European Cup will be hosted by Romania in Cluj-Napoca on the last weekend of June. Romania had a lot of changes in the recent years, getting stronger year by year (finishing on the second overall place on the World Championships in Italy!), organizing bigger and bigger international competitions and seminars.
On the third day of the European Championships, in the last hours of the competition, there was a surprise announcement – the competition was stopped for 5 minutes, as Grandmaster Trajtenberg had something important to say: the ITF has promoted Master Paul Weiler from Germany to the 9th degree for his work for the ITF. (See the upcoming interview with Grandmaster Weiler on the AETF website soon.)
I talked to a lot of competitors and coaches throughout the days, and everyone agreed that Scotland had an unquestionable hospitality with great people and a very nice countryside, making this event an unforgettable one. the next big tournament organized by AETF will be the European Championships in Tampere, Finland in 2016, see you there!
Photos taken by me and my assistant at the Euros are available on the following albums on Facebook:
By Norbert Érseki:
By Orsolya Vicze-Máthé:
The complete results are available from the competition’s registration webiste at http://euro2015.pztkd.lublin.pl/ on the Reports and Classification tabs.
