Jonathan De Matas cap­tured a bronze medal in the spar­ring com­pe­ti­tion in T&T's his­toric par­tic­i­pa­tion at the fifth In­ter­na­tion­al Taek­won­do Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) World Cup, which took place re­cent­ly in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica.

The five ath­letes who rep­re­sent­ed T&T were all mem­bers of the Eu­ge Taek­won-Do Acad­e­my.

The team was led by Franklyn Eu­gene (ITF IV Dan), and in­clud­ed Fran­cis­ca Sadal (black belt I Dan) Aaliyah Ma­haraj (black belt I Dan) Christo­pher Nakhid (black belt II Dan) De Matas (red belt).

Nakhid par­tic­i­pat­ed in four events: pat­terns, spar­ring, tech­ni­cal break­ing and pow­er break­ing.

He placed fourth in pow­er break­ing and com­pet­ed keen­ly in his pat­tern event, Eui Am, in which he was nar­row­ly edged by his op­po­nent, 3-2.

His first round spar­ring match was against a Sloven­ian op­po­nent which he lost 4-0.

Sadal com­pet­ed in the pat­terns event in the 36-45 age group and was one of the three com­peti­tors out of six com­peti­tors to com­plete the event.

This is the first time that a fe­male ath­lete from T&T has com­pet­ed in the pat­terns com­pe­ti­tion.

Ma­haraj com­pet­ed in Pow­er Break­ing and in the 36-45 age group and made great rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Again, this was the first time a fe­male ath­lete from T&T com­pet­ed in this event.

There was on­ly one com­peti­tor in this cat­e­go­ry placed first as the com­pe­ti­tion stan­dards were very high.

Eu­gene com­pet­ed in spar­ring in the 36-45 ad­vance se­nior age group.

In the first minute, his Ar­gen­tin­ian op­po­nent was ahead by two points. Then, Eu­gene con­vert­ed the score 3-2. How­ev­er, at the end, the Ar­gen­tinean came back to win the event. In the pow­er break­ing, Eu­gene was placed sev­enth in a field of 36 com­peti­tors, edg­ing clos­er to the cur­rent world lead­ers in the event from Paraguay, Ar­genti­na, and Eng­land.

De Matas, mean­while, com­pet­ed in pat­terns in the colour belt 18-36 age group and won his first round against his Ar­gen­tinean op­po­nent.

His pat­tern Hwa�Rang was just too pow­er­ful for the Ar­gen­tinean. In his sec­ond round of pat­terns, he faced a Ja­maican op­po­nent whom he lost to by one point. In the spar­ring com­pe­ti­tion, De Matas was able to cap­ture the bronze medal against an­oth­er Ja­maica op­po­nent. De Matas was up on points. How­ev­er, de­duc­tions had the best of him. To his cred­it, De Matas fought hard and again his tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties ex­ceed­ed those of his com­peti­tors.