A team of IKKU athletes recently travelled to Germany to compete in the 22nd WKF World Karate Championships. The competition, which was held in Bremen from 5 - 9th November, saw the world's best competing for 16 World Champion titles. It was the key event for all of our competitors, who spent months of preparation training in their own clubs in addition to competing both nationally and internationally. Over 110 countries and almost 1000 competitors participated in the Championships.

Gordon Smith, Aaron McLoughlin, Justyne Collins, Rachel Earley and Ladies National Coach Paul Brennan represented the IKKU. First up for the IKKU in the Mens +84kg event was Gordon Smith, who saw success earlier in the year when he took bronze in the same category at the Budapest Open. While Gordon had a competitive event he was unfortunately beaten in the second round by his opponent from the Dominican Republic.

Up next was Justyne Collins in the Ladies +68kg event. Justyne had only recently recovered from a training injury which hampered her preparation for the event following her success at the British Open. She went out in the second round of the event against a Turkish opponent, who took bronze in both the Dutch and Paris open earlier in the year.

Thursday morning saw Rachel Earley take to the mats in the Ladies -55kg category against a member of the Malaysian squad. Rachel was very unlucky that scoring decisions went against her by the narrowest of margins against a very tough opponent, who was fresh from a bronze in the Lasko open in March and 5th in Okinawa at the end of August.

Aaron McLoughlin was up next for the IKKU on Thursday afternoon competing in the -60kg event. Aaron made it through to the second round where he met an experienced competitor from the Serbian team and missed out on a place in the third round by only one point.

The ladies team was last up on the Friday. The team consisting of Rachel Early, Linda Walsh (ONAKAI), Nicole Perry (ONAKAI) and Mairi Kerin (ONAKAI) gave a brilliant account of themselves throughout the competition convincingly beating a team from Paraguay in the 1st round by two fights to nil. They met a team from Hungary in the second round and with Linda Walsh on top form and leading 3-0 in her fight it looked like they would progress to the last sixteen. Linda sustained an injury during the fight, which affected her performance, but continued on for the team. Her opponent managed to claw back points in the last few seconds. The team was incredibly unlucky to miss out on a place in the third round by only one point.

Overall the team gave a really good performance in their respective categories at the largest and most competitive WKF event of the calendar. The next event will be the Belgian Open.

Video of Rachel Early against her Malaysian opponent