Young students compete in Cyprus

Junior Karate Team - The tradition continues... 2 gold medals

Four junior athletes aged between 9 and 14 have successfully stole the show in Limassol, Cyprus on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd October 2006. Lyndon Mallia, the youngest athlete of the team soon became the centre of attraction with his impeccable form, eye-direction, posture and dynamics of his karate when he outperformed athletes from Cyprus, Romania, and Israel in this international goodwill junior traditional karate event held by the Cyprus Traditional Karate Federation. The Romanian coach of one of the most successful clubs in Europe, having produced hundreds of world class athletes and medal winners in traditional karate, said of Lyndon, "This boy is smart. He has the making of a future champion". He even spent time chatting with Lyndon after the competition. Lyndon has for the past three years been coached by Vince Cutajar of the Hiroshi Shirai Karate Club of Zebbug. Mr Cutajar has just graduated san-dan (third dan) and is a qualified coach under the Coach Certification Programme of the Traditional Karate Federation of Malta.

The other gold medal was won with style by Luke Mizzi in the 14-15 year old category. In the same category, and also a finalist was Liam Tabone. Liam was in first place in the eliminations. In the finals, he started off with an advanced kata, Sochin, normally performed by fourth dan black belts. He is very passionate about this kata and has competed in local competitions with it as tokui-kata (preferred kata), out-marking even many seniors. Luke on the other hand opted for Bassai-dai, a kata he has just practiced endlessly for his black belt examination with Masao Kawasoe, the 8th dan master of Shotokan Karate who is the examiner of the local federation. It was a close encounter with even a Cypriot in the final performing Kanku-dai. The panel of judges ranked Luke Mizzi as the winner, The Cypriot athlete as silver medallist and Liam Tabone as bronze medallist. Both these athletes are students of the Muteki Karate Studio which has a long tradition in producing quality athletes. Their coach is Omar Azzopardi, himself a product of the same club since he was 9 years old. He is the 2001 Junior European gold medallist in kata and has been part of the Azzopardi Trio seniors kata team since he was 15 years old. That team has had a string of successes in both senior European and World Championships of the world body of Traditional Karate. Omar has just graduated san-dan (third dan) from Edinburgh during a course with Mr Tsuyama of the Japan Karate Federation, Mr Kawasoe of the World Shotokan Institute, and Mr Takeshi Naito of the Japan Karate Association. With him on the course was Franco Azzopardi who graduated go-dan (fifth dan).

The other athlete in the team, was the 13 year-old Manuela Zammit student of Lynette Zerafa. She is a well-known face in local competition who has also just graduated first dan, demonstrated an optimum level of kata performing her favourite Heian Godan for the elimination and Bassai Dai for the final. She came in a tie with the athlete from Cyprus and she had to perform again. The panel of judges gave a three-two vote in favour of the Cypriot. The technical director of the federation however strongly believes that Manuela is an athlete with far superior qualities in kata. She is dynamic in her power generation, and has geometry in her form that will surely give her the results she merits in the future. "She was just a victim of spontaneous judgement. Perhaps the judges did not feel what she was expressing."