Picking up from where I left off in my last post…
The competition went great and it was an incredible experience. I can’t describe how awesome it is to be among 1600 competitors from 70 countries all in one place. I guess that kinda goes along with being a world championship.
I competed in one division – Men’s Individual Kata. Kata is a performance of a karate routines. Fighting, or kumite as it’s called, is the other type of competition. This was the biggest division in the whole tournament with around 150 competitors. We were divided into four rings during eliminations and even then it took half a day to go through. The competition format for the elimination rounds was single elimination with 5 flags through simultaneous performance of a randomly chosen kata. So a pair of competitors would go up, the head judge randomly chooses one of four katas (Bassai-Dai, Kanku-Dai, Enpi, Jion), both competitors perform at the same time, then 5 judges vote for the winner with flags.
I had a bye the first round and was supposed to face a guy from Hungary for the second round. I was pretty confident I could beat the him but as I waited to be called, I saw my opponent get called up against a guy from Venezuela. They’d added a number of last-minute competitors so they squeezed in the Venezuelan guy ahead of me. This kinda threw a wrench in the plans as I wasn’t so sure I could beat him. I saw him training earlier before our division was called and he looked pretty solid. Looking at the draw sheet, I was sure that if I could just get past him I wouldn’t face very strong competition for the rest of the elimination rounds.
I wasn’t about to go back home having performed once and losing. I was pumped. I stood by the edge of the ring waiting to be called in, ready for battle. My heart was racing. I stared across the ring and stared at my opponent. A mere obstacle. They called us in and we bowed to each other before stepping into the ring. We turned to face the head judge. We walked to the centre of the stage. I was ready. The judge shuffled some cards then drew one and held it up. Bassai-Dai, it said. Bassai-Dai, we declared.
I became a spectator. My body was now moving on its own. It was automatic, as a heart beats without thought. I’ve trained this kata hundreds, if not thousands of times. My bread and butter for so many years in my younger days. I could see my opponent in my peripheral vision. He was a couple moves ahead of me. He was rushing. I maintained my pace. He probably spent most of his time training the flashier katas, preparing for the later rounds. He had neglected training the simpler, basic katas. He lost his balance.
Such a minor mistake yet so grave an error when you only have one chance. We were barely into our performances yet the writing was on the wall. All I had to do was finish without making a mistake. I took my time and it was over a mere minute later. We waited for the decision. But I already knew. The head judge blew his whistle. The flags snapped as the judges raised them decisively. I looked around. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five white flags. My opponent was red.
I later found out that the Venezuelan guy had faced me 9 years ago at the world championships in Italy. He beat me then. I guess this is payback. I asked him how he remembered…he told me he watches the tapes. Now that’s hardcore.
Having overcome the Venezuelan I continued on to soundly defeat a Kyrgyzstanian and a Slovenian both 5-0. I made it to the semi-finals where I was in one of two groups of 8 competitors. At this stage we were allowed to perform a kata of our choosing and we performed one at a time and were ranked by points. I performed one of my favourites, Gojushiho-Dai, and I was quite pleased with it. Alas my journey would end there as I barely missed the top 8 by 0.1 points.
My roommates now introduce me as Ninth.
I went to Japan just hoping I’d win at least the first round so I’m unsurprisingly very happy with my 9th place finish. Looking forward, the next world championships are in 3 years hosted in Greece. I better get training. And watch the tapes.
