South Dublin Taekwondo

After the bitter disappointment of just missing out on Olympic qualification by one place, South Dublin Taekwondo’s Jack Woolley was back on the road again to resume his emergence on the Olympic Taekwondo scene at the 2016 US Open Taekwondo Championships. The event with 1700 athletes held in Reno, Nevada, which draws major attendance by the worlds best due to its double ranking points status was the first in his busy February calendar. With the great news that his world ranking position had increased to eleventh, Jack was seeded second in the event. With a bye in the first round due to his seeding he and his coach Robert Taaffe attentively viewed the first round match between Canada & USA to see who his first opponent would be.  It was to be Rwendy Luna of USA who saw off his Canadian counterpart in the preliminaries. Jacks warm up match against Rwendy finished comfortably  17-1 in favour of the SDTKD black belt, ending the match at end of the second round of three as his points gap exceeded 12 points. In the quarter finals Jack had to face Isaac Vigil of the USA who was rumoured to be a tricky customer due to his low centre of gravity and his speed kicks. Jack contained him well throughout and once again finished the match early 26-4 with a barrage of his signature head kicks. With an army of adopted Irish fans, many of whom he befriended at a recent Christmas Training camp in Spain, his semi final was a major task where he drew David Kim of USA, who conquered Jack in the 2015 tournament. A testing affair ended up 13-12 in the Irish atheletes favour. With the audience building and the army at home watching the live streaming Jack now needed to face off against world number seven Mourad Laachouiri of Belgium for the coveted US Open title. This was the first meeting of the pair who almost locked horns many times in recent years. A slow paced calculating match ended up 7-4 to Belgium. At the end of the game the two duelling players shared a sportsmanship embrace of mutual respect as both now are very familiar with each other from the World Circuit. Jack finished with silver and a valuable 12 points to add to his collection of 75 from 2015 to restart his charge on Tokyo 2020 and every major in between. Jack who is in fifth year flies home to get back to school before flying out to Canada next weekend with to continue his Olympic Taekwondo event participation.