The Open Dutch 2018 edition was held on Sunday the 28 th of January. This year we held the tournament in a different city and as such also new venue. In this new venue we are able to have 10 rings in the same sports hall, a huge change compared to previous years as we normally had 2 separate halls. We personally felt that this made life for the coaches, referees, spectators and even competitors easier. There no longer was a need to run between halls to watch your team mates participate. On top of that, this new venue has a hotel straight above the sports hall and a restaurant attached to. What a big bonus!

We started the tournament with over 600 competitors. Various competitors participated in multiple disciplines, so we had 1094 people starting. The competitors came from 71 different clubs, across 17 countries. These clubs also brought 72 umpires, and as mentioned they supported 10 rings.

Before we discuss some details, the first price for the black belts for the best club went to Rivervalley Taekwon-do from Ireland. They came with a big group, and harvested a lot of medals. For the colored belts the best club was Sportschule D’amato from Germany. Both clubs impressed us! Yo our own surprise Difesa Sports ended up second in the black belt category overall, great accomplishment considering the relatively low number of competitors compared to some other clubs.

There were many great competitors, probably the highest quality of competitors we have seen so far. Lets list some of the winners here which stood out to us:

Tuls / Patters:

• Junior female 1st Dan Selma Li from Norway (3rd World and European champion)
• Junior male 1st Dan Jack Eilertsen from Norway (very close final against Steinkjer Ingebrigt)
• Senior female 2nd Dan, Madeleine Lind from Norway (2nd World)
• Senior female, 3rd Dan, Isabel Brider from England
• Senior male 3rd Dan, Reuben Williams from England (World champion)

Sparring Male:

• 57 kg Alen Preloznik from Slovenia, he won from Vitali Solovey (World Champion junior) in the semi finals!
• -63 kg Luke McGrath from Ireland
• -70 kg Jorg Gubbels won against Bryan v/d Westelaken in the finals, both from the Netherlands
• -78 kg Antti Rintanen from Finland
• -85 kg Amin Al Rmadan uit Germany(2nd World) won against Gilles Brown from Scotland (3rd World)
• +85 kg Mick Delrock Nederland

Sparring Female:

• -62 kg Maartje Gubbels won in finals against Sarah Lehane (European and World Champion)
• -68 kg Valeria Trujillo Ayala (Norway) won the finals against Minma Kivine from Finland
• +75 kg Nina Meppelder (World Champion)

All results for all categories can be found on Sportdata here: https://www.sportdata.org/taekwondo_itf/set-online/popup_main.php?popup_action=results&vernr=77&active_menu=calendar

If you don’t want to miss out next year make sure to follow our facebook page to find out when the next edition will be. Also, our website has links to all the various photo pages for those who are curious what it looked like.
(https://www.facebook.com/OpenDutch/>> http://www.open-dutch.nl)

Overall champions in the senior class for female in the -62 kg class was Andrea Sinner Germany and in the female +62 kg it was Nina Meppelder from the Netherlands. Overall champions for male in the -70 was Jorg Gubbels from the Netherlands and in the +70kg category was Amin Al Rmadan from Germany.

We want to thank all of our volunteers, visitors, competitors, coaches, referees, sponsors and we hope to see you all the last weekend of January at the “Open Dutch Championships 2019”.

Master Willy van de Mortel
Open Dutch Taekwon-do Championships