The New Zealand WTF Unification Steering Committee held a meeting on 13th February in Auckland to discuss the composition of the management team that would accompany the New Zealand Team to the WTF World Championships 2005 in Spain.
The management team for the WTF World Championships 2005 was appointed as:
- New Zealand Team Manager – Mansour Ansari
- Head of Male Team: – Matt Ransom
- Male Team Coach: – Jeff Razavi
- Female Team Coach: – Kesi O'Neill
- Head of Female Team – Sharleen Wright
The composition of the management team was fully endorsed and supported by the World Taekwondo Federation, the New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) and Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC). Grandmaster Lee, Jung Nam the Chairman of the Unification Steering Committee will accompanied the New Zealand Team to Spain.
After a successful unification Tournament held in Auckland at the end of January, the New Zealand WTF Unification Steering Committee then held a meeting to discuss the composition of the team that would represent New Zealand at the WTF World Championships in Spain.
As expected there were no suprises in the composition of the team after some excellent performances of Taekwondo at the Tournament.
The players named in the New Zealand team were: Andrea Kilday (Hornby), Aroha Miller (Christchurch), Ealeanor Margaret Currie (Tauranga), Nicki Miller (Tauranga), Armando Abdi (St Lukes), Desmond Allen (Avonhead), Logan Campbell (Se Jong), Andrew Brooks (Upper Hutt), Danny Cartlidge (Christchurch), and Dafydd Sanders(Auckland)
From there it was all hands on deck as the individual team members returned to their clubs for training, preparation and the usual fund-raising frenzy in order to get to Spain. This was the first ever unified team to represent New Zealand in WTF Taekwondo in over 11 years so the team and officials were all committed to a successful and united venture off to the World Championships.
The team arrived in Spain on the 11th April and after a day to recover from the jetlag commenced training at the tournament venue in Madrid alongside the other countries in attendance. The tournament kicked off on the 13th April and ran until the 17th April.
Overall the New Zealand team came home with two wins and fell short of the bronze in the Womens Featherweight Division by just one fight. Christchurch's Aroha Miller and Auckland's Logan Campbell both won their first fights and proved that New Zealand could in fact foot it with the best and win fights after the lacklustre performance by New Zealand the previous year at the Athens Olympic Games.
Each of the New Zealand Team members performed well with some close fights in the eliminations and all proved that New Zealand will not take long to catch up on the rest of the world now that the sport is unifying in New Zealand. Given the funding available for other bigger countries who only managed to win a couple of medals, and New Zealand puling off the wins it did, one can only imagine how well we will do in the future.
With the formation of the Oceania Region under the World Taekwondo Federation New Zealand will shortly have access to more regular competition within it's own region and this will greatly enhance our athletes and also put us in good stead for the Olympics in 2008.
The young athletes who steeped out onto the mats in Spain and the officials that accompanied them were in fact trail-blazers for New Zealand Olympic Taekwondo and the future for once is looking bright!
