South Dublin Taekwondo

Not long after Echo Sports Star of the Year Jack Woolley had left the Green Isle hotel, he was out on the road running during the night running to ensure his weight was on point and in Dublin Airport the next morning with his coach Niamh Buffini for an early couple of flights to Cyprus via London where he competed with at an invitational tournament. Jack was requested to attend the international event which was to promote taekwondo in Cyprus due to good relations between theCyprus Taekwondo President and his Irish counterpart Master Martin Fleming. The 17 year old who fights at -54kg and his coaches accepted the invitation as it was a good way to keep Jack ring fresh ahead of the January Olympic Qualifiers. Although the event was a smaller affair than the South Dublin Taekwondo athlete has attended this year, some well-known teams and adversaries of Jacks were competing. Jack had 2 matches on the day, both with Israeli National Team opponents. His first match was against Nimrod Krivishkiy which ended 10-3 in favour of Woolley, the match brought some closure to a recent semi-final encounter in Croatia where the Israeli could not compete in the semi finals against the Irish Team player due to injury. In the final, Jack faced off against Hilell Zaritsky, a rematch of Jacks preliminary round bout at this years Israel Open Championships, on both occasions Jack managed to win convincingly with a ’12 point gap’ early finish to the match, in this case the final score was 21-9 giving Jack 1^st place & another international gold. This whirlwind weekend brought to an end to a fabulous competitive outing in 2015, and now all sights are set on his training preparations including a training camp in Madrid over the Christmas. Jack now will need to adapt his weight and match play from his -54kg usual division to the -58kg Olympic weight category in time for his next competitive match in Turkey here he hopes to reach the final to gain one of the final Olympic placings for Rio 2016.