The presentation for these Awards took place on the evening of Friday 5 December 2003, at the Kentish Town dojang.

The Student of the Year for 2003 is Carlo Giacobazzi, 9th Kup. He receives a certificate and engraved trophy. Since joining the school in December 2002, Carlo has always demonstrated an excellent attitude and conviction in his training. He is good enough by now to be a green-tag or green belt, but he has unfortunately missed several gradings! Despite this, Carlo has not wavered in his enjoyment of Taekwon-Do and his interest has stayed high. In several competitions through 2003, he has shown excellent sparring skills and I fully anticipate more of the same in 2004. I fully expect him to continue his solid development this year at the brand new New Barnet school and get back on the grading ladder! Carlo has all of the attributes of an excellent future black belt. Well done to him!

There were additional certificates awarded to Alireza Gulestani, James Pearce, Joseph Newis, Edgar Lekarkin and Tuti Isaza-Martinez for various criteria but principally dedication and attendance.

Remember that the school at Kentish Town is moving to New Barnet from January 31 2004.

This was a well-organised and efficiently run event thanks to the help of several officials. The tournament ran for 2 hours and 20 minutes.

The 3-team triangular tournament was an excellent opportunity for juniors to gain valuable competitive experience for national and international events later in the year. There were Team Patterns, Individual Patterns and Sparring events.

The Team Pattern was won by Kentish Town who put the most effort into the presentation of the chosen pattern Chon-Ji. Despite some mistakes in execution, their efforts were just enough to clinch the win. Crouch End B was second and Crouch End A was third.

In individual patterns, each competitor went up twice against their opposite number in the other teams. This section was comprehensively won by Crouch End A with several good performances from the experienced students. In second place, Kentish Town performed very well especially Yuliya Shybayeva and Edgar Lekarkin who won both of their matchups.

The sparring event was the most exciting part of the day with each competitor once again going up twice for their team. Performances were generally very good with the large crowd of spectators making themselves heard and the teams shouting for their side during each bout. There were 18 fights in total and at the end, Crouch End A just managed to squeeze a win for the Sparring section over Kentish Town. Considering how junior in rank the Kentish Town team is, this is an excellent performance from them. In particular, Edgar once again distinguished himself by being the only KT member to win both his bouts.

Overall winners and Gold medallists were Crouch End A; Silver medallists were Excel Kentish Town; Bronze medallists were Crouch End B.

The Kentish Town team performed very well and should be very pleased with this result. Both of the other teams had a great deal more experience but the Excel team were not worried about this and fought confidently and with good skill. Well done!

Pictures here.

This major national competition was excellently organised and had a large attendance of competitiors and officials.

Positions of Individuals known to Excel are listed below.

GOLD

Congratulations to Taekwon-Do Excel instructor Rowland Adelagun who has been selected to represent England in the European Championships 2003!

The Championships are to be held in Rijeka, Croatia on the 10-13th April. Mr Adelagun is competing both as part of the England Team and also in the 80kg+ individual Sparring event. An interview with him taken last year is here.

Congratulations also to Piotr Capaja, 2nd Degree, who is also part of the England Team and is sparring in the under 71kg category.

More info is available here on the All Europe Taekwon-Do Federation website.

Congratulations to Taekwon-Do Team "The Finsbury Fighters" who have completed filming a show for the new television series of Fort Boyard!

The team - all Taekwon-Do practitioners from London - consisted of Rowland Adelagun (Captain), Florence Durr, Thomas Denis, Sarah Worth and John Uter - and boy did we kick some butt!

The team was one of 20 teams selected for the series in the face of stiff competition. We chose our name based on our audition location which was Finsbury Park, but we train at Queens Crescent Community Centre in Kentish Town and at George Green School in Docklands. Filming the show was great fun and very challenging for the whole team. We came through strong, using our brains, brawn and team spirit to beat the Fort in style!

All of the team worked brilliantly together with masses of encouragement, common sense and jokes galore! We also achieved the highest score and prize-money to date by quite a margin. We came, we saw and we conquered Fort Boyard!

In particular, John Uter excelled at his physical tasks. He had two very difficult challenges that he tackled with consummate ease - a true, top level athlete.

Florence Durr had to do the first challenge for the team and was facing an automatic lock-in if she did not succeed. Despite the pressure, she blazed through it (and her second challenge later) to get the team off to a perfect start!

Sarah Worth - poor girl! - had nightmare tasks to perform! We couldn't believe how she faced up to the truly scary challenges and just got on with it for the team. Top marks to her for bravery and team spirit.

Thomas Denis was literally chomping at the bit to complete his task! Like Florence, he was facing automatic lock-in if he did not complete the exercise - and when you see the show, you'll understand why few men would want to be left locked in such a position! Once again, he performed like a trooper under hard-core pressure and successfully did his physical challenge.

And Rowland Adelagun was on top form as well, His first challenge ended in noble failure but this was predictable when you see the task - never send a 6-foot-4 guy to do a 4-foot-4 guys job! But in the second task, his complete composure under severe pressure impressed everyone and helped clinch Boyard's gold! He performed like a captain should.

All the team contributed positively to the winning result and we all had a truly great time out in France. We had a holiday, sun, sand and sea, prize money, fame and glory all in one weekend - class!

Lookout for the show in autumn on Challenge TV - we confidently predict it will be best show of the series!

Pictures to follow asap...

Read more in The Wharf newspaper.