Kees Yorkton took three athletes to a training camp and tournament at the Mexican National Taekwondo Training Centre at La Loma, in San Luis Potosi October 28 to November 3.
La Loma produced three olympic medals for Mexico Taekwondo in 2008.
Yorkton athletes included Matthew Bodnaryk, Autumn Ashcroft and Francis Bazin. Master Wayne Mitchell accompanied the athletes as coach.
The event, which focused on 20-year-olds and under, featured over 2000 participants from North and South America.
One of the seminars was jointly conducted by Italian Geremia Di Constanzo, six time European Champion and Spain's Juan Antonio Ramos, two time world champion. Their five hour session focussed on strategy and technical aspects of the sport.
Both provided an inspirational and complimenting approach to instruction. The lessons learned will an important benefit to the participants in the future.
The competition was held Monday and Tuesday providing results beyond expectations as all three Yorkton athletes came home with the gold medals in sparring.
The closest contest was Bodnaryk's gold medal match that went to sudden death overtime which proved to be an exciting match that had the crowd cheering and applauding.
Taekwondo in Mexico is the number two most popular sport behind soccer.
Yorkton athletes were surprised by the recognition they received along with the photo and autograph requests for which they were canvassed.
Even the coach was signing autographs. "It was an eye opener to them about how big the game of Taekwondo is in the world. It was also a great confidence builder for the three athletes future competitions," comments Mitchell.
Bodnaryk and Ashcroft have been invited back to La Loma for March or April.
Many national olympic teams go to La Loma for two months at this time of year.
The sacrifice would be great and the pair may only be able to attend part of the training which would even be of a higher level than the initial event. To be able to train with Olympians from all over the world would vault their abilities to a new level and be a dream opportunity come true.
