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New Zealand Team Lead Into Final Day Of World Champs

Sunday 31 May 2015, 6:39PM

By dave worsley

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New Zealand remain the leading nation going into the final day of the ITF Taekwon-Do world championships in Jesolo, Italy after three more golds and several other medals were added to the tally on the penultimate day of the competition.

New Zealand now has a total of 12 gold, eight silver and 11 bronze ahead of Poland in second on seven gold and Romania third with six gold.

The women’s senior female special technique team of Estelle Spiers (Palmerston North), Kara Timmer (HWA, Tauranga ) and Melissa Timperley (Auckland) took out gold in their competition and were joined by Palmerston North’s Rose Biddiscombe who won gold in the junior female sparring while the junior female team pattern also finished with a gold.

Silver medals were picked up by the senior woman’s team pattern, junior female specialty and Frances Lloyd from Tauranga in the junior sparring. Lloyd also won a bronze medal in the junior power, while other bronze medals were gained by the junior male team in specialty as well as Georgia Moore from the Legacy gym in Auckland in junior sparring.

Over 50 countries are taking part in the tournament which includes four core events: patterns; sparring; power test; special technique. Within each of these events there are both individual and team categories. The categories are further split into junior (under 18) and senior (over 18) classifications, and there are separate male and female divisions. In the individual patterns, competitors are further classified by black belt rank, and individual sparring is split into six weight divisions. In addition to the four core events there is also Pre-arranged sparring, which is a pairs competition that has only junior and senior classifications

New Zealand finished second at the 2009 World Champs in Argentina, won the tournament in Wellington in 2011 and was third in Spain in 2013.