Newsletter Newsletter 3/2017 VI. Mightyfist Eagles Cup - Report

Not much more than two weeks before the World Championships in Dublin, Ireland is held the joint team of Sasok Sports Club and Zen Power Taekwon-do Club has organized the Mightyfist Eagles Cup for the 6th time.

After another year of absence - this time because of the World Cup was held in Budapest last year - the competition was again a success story.

The organizers would like to express their sincerest gratitude for their generous sponsors, especially the naming sponsor of the competition: Mightyfist.

For this year’s event the competitors arrived from 7 different countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine and of course Hungary - from 45 different clubs, with a total of 380 competitors. It meant about 60 more participants compared to the last event held in 2015.

The tournament’s most appealing feature - the round robin system was of course kept this year too. It means that even with a loss of match the competitors could move forward, having multiple matches at the sparring and pattern categories - meaning a lot more practice at competitions. The statistics of the competition showed that with the round robin system with the current number of competitors there were 1124 matches versus 598 - which would be a number if there would have been a regular pyramid system.

For this year the organizers had made some changes of the competition, most of the trials of the changes went very well according to the feedbacks got from the participants. Namely the few major changes were the following:

So far blue and red colored ribbons were used to make a difference between the blue and red corners because most of the competitors could not afford a whole set of both blue and red sparring equipment. But it was difficult for the umpires to do the scoring during the sparring matches. For this year the red and blue coloured headguards were made obligatory, so it would make the umpire’s work a lot easier - which apparently they did really like and expressed that it was much better than last years, but still the competitors did not need to buy and bring the whole set of both colours.

Another change was that at previous editions the second day went really long because of the power breakings. Many of the competitors were still competing on Sunday during the power breaking event so they had to wait a lot for the competitors to arrive to finish the power test. For this year we did not start with the children and cadets on Saturday, but we have moved all of their categories to Sunday, and started with the juniors and seniors, allowing a lot more flexibility on the power tests on the second day - so this year the power tests were finished earlier than the rest of the categories.

The biggest and most innovative change was the new special techniques rules: the heights were all lowered by 30 centimeters, however the competitor could choose their own heights at the registration. This meant that there were a lot more competitors able to make their kicks successfully - having a lot more feeling of success for them. It also made the scoring a bit more complex, however there were differences in their points, meaning that the ones who in total could jump higher with a successful kick won their categories, and it meant a lot less of endgame as at most of the categories the whole results were set already after the first round. (For a bit of explanation of the details please visit our website at http://eaglescup.eu/ special-techniques).

There were some changes in the categories as well: because of the popularity of the advanced seniors category at the World Cup, 5 advanced senior sparring categories were added (two female and three male). The competitors at the age between two categories could this time choose to compete in both categories - meaning they could have a lot more practice by competing in multiple categories.

Of course it could not have been made without the umpires who made the competition available, and worked around the clock from the early morning until the late evening - the organizers again would like to express their gratitude for them.

See you in 2018!

AETF Reporter,
Norbert Érseki