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Why Some Countries Did Better Than Others At The Junior World Champs In North Korea

Mr Daniel Kerr


Everyone has there own opinions on why some teams do better than other teams in any sport, and this is mine on why I believe some countries did a lot better then other ones at the I.T.F Junior World Champs in Pyongyang North Korea.

First of all I feel there are many reasons why countries like North Korea and Russia did better then countries like Australia, Nepal and even Iceland. Most people would say that the number one reason would have to be money, but I disagree with that.

This maybe one very important reason but I believe that the main and number one reason is time, time training Taekwon-Do time out of Taekwon-Do and time thinking about Taekwon-Do, and it would seem that the countries that put more time in to their training did better at the I.T.F. Junior World Champs. When I was over in Korea I heard many things about the Korean team and their preparation. Some of the things were that they had been training from a few months after the last junior world champs in India up until the current ones, I was also told about how they have 12 hour training days every day, when over here the most time we have to train is 3 hours a night if we are lucky.

But this all comes down to things like having jobs and going to school or as some people call it having a life. For the more time spent training the better you should become. But again this is not always the case, for if the training you are doing is not the right kind of training then there is no point in doing it.

And this is where my next reason for why some countries did better then others comes in to play "coaches" again I will use the North Koreans as my example. I am sure that their coaches are the top of the pile when it comes to coaches. They would have been some of the most experienced coaching staff in the world. And this goes back to the time reasoning, they would have been doing it for years and it would have become a way of life even a job to them,when to other coaches of other countries it is something they do part time. But you can't blame every thing on having no time or on the coaches. The sports person must be someone who wants to win and do well, they too must be competitive and have the desire to train and have some natural ability.

This comes down to "numbers" the next reason, The more people you have to chooses from the more talent there will be. In New Zealand 12 people tried out for the team 11 went, and in Australia 6 tried out 5 went but in Argentina they had hundreds to pick from. Which is the same with any sport some countries have the numbers for one sport but not for others, and with numbers comes competition. It's like when someone is trying out for a spot on a team and they are the only ones trying for that spot, though this person maybe very good and should get the spot, they might just be that much better if their was someone there to push them and to make them work just that little bit more.

Eg: There are 13 people going for one spot on a team, but only one of these people has a real chance of making it in. With this many people going for the spot in the team it is going to make the one that has the best chance work a lot more, because he will not know how good these other 12 are so they will push him/herself to the top of their capability, and in doing so the other people will be inspired by this and hopefully it will make them work harder as well so that every one is pushing each other to do their best and making for the best competition.

The next reason is one of the biggest ones "experience".

Just like the coach the competitor must have experience in competition to know how to handle anything that might happen.

After speaking with some people from other teams at the junior world champs in North Korea, I learned that people over seas have much more opportunity to compete at a high level mainly because of the number of people and the number of tournaments held, and this all adds to experience and why some teams did better in North Korea.

It is very hard for a country like New Zealand to do anything about experience I believe that it is something that will only come with time, mainly because of the fact that we are so far away from the rest of the world and only have a few tournaments a year which can not be helped.

I know first hand how hard it is to train all year and only compete in one high class tournament. Coming from the South Island I only get the chance to compete two maybe three times a year and that is just not enough experience to compete at world champ level.

This concludes my reasons on why I believe some countries did better then others at the I.T.F Junior world champs in North Korea. Here I have a few results showing which countries did better.




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