This is a 25 minute video I put together from footage I shot of the New Zealanders competing at the ITF World Champs in Rimini 2001. Our team won zero medals which was heart breaking! The video includes Susk’a demo – the first time many had seen him perform. Classic footage.
DON’T FORGET TO WATCH No. 10 – Paul McPhail performs Juche forwards and backwards
For my 5th degree black belt grading in 1993 I thought it would be a cool idea to perform Juche Tul forwards then backwards for General Choi.
The plan failed miserably as I started the backwards part… I hadn’t even considered the possibility that General Choi would take offence to it. He turned his head and refused to watch. I figured… well… I may as well carry on now and struggled through to the end.
I passed the grading so I guess the General had forgiven me by the day the results were announced.
Here is the footage of the pattern at the grading.
The Sharp International Tournament in 1985 was a turning point for Taekwon-Do in New Zealand.
The tournament organiser was Charles Birch, a Miramar member who had experience organising international hockey tournaments. In many ways he helped to get things running well within New Zealand.
As well as achieving national television coverage and a major sponsor for the tournament, he also established organisational systems which were in place for many years, such as the regional “cells”.
Others who made exceptional contributions towards the tournament were Harry Hemana, Sonny Ooi and Steve Mulholland. Seven countries attended the tournament including Japan and the United States. The ITF Vice President, Chon Jin Shik, donated $10 000 to ITFNZ which really enabled the Foundation to make some headway.
Over a decade has now passed since the Founder of Taekwon-Do passed away. Every now and then I reflect that most of the people in my classes, even senior black belts, never got to meet and train with General Choi. That is a great pity as he was certainly a legend – an amazing figure and source of incredible knowledge.
In April 2002, practically on his death-bed, Gen Choi travelled to the United States to fulfil his promise to Grand Master CE Sereff to teach a course for his students. That was considered his last IIC. The previous September was the last full course, held in Jamaica shortly after the devastation of 9/11. As you will hear him say at the end of the video, the world was chaotic and people were afraid to travel. But 30 fanatical Taekwon-Do students gathered in Jamaica regardless to learn from the man himself.
Over two decades have now passed since the Founder of Taekwon-Do passed away. Every now and then I reflect that most of the people in my classes, even senior black belts, never got to meet and train with General Choi. That is a great pity as he was certainly a legend – an amazing figure and source of incredible knowledge.
In April 2002, practically on his death-bed, Gen Choi travelled to the United States to fulfil his promise to Grand Master CE Sereff to teach a course for his students. That was considered his last IIC. The previous September was the last full course, held in Jamaica shortly after the devastation of 9/11. As you will hear him say at the end of the video, the world was chaotic and people were afraid to travel. But 30 fanatical Taekwon-Do students gathered in Jamaica regardless to learn from the man himself.
This footage was shot by myself, Mark Banicevich and Graham Patterson – the three Kiwis at the course. It’s not high quality, but nevertheless it is valuable, historic footage to be cherished.
General Choi always encouraged us to ask questions. In fact before each course, he would approach some seniors privately and encourage them to ask lots of questions at the course. He usually wouldn’t discuss techniques much before that – preferring instead to save that for the seminar.
These videos show some techniques that have since been modified slightly since Gen Choi’s passing. The various organisations around the world have sought to standardise techniques as much as possible so it is natural that decisions had to be made on certain points that were ambiguous. The point here is that over the last decade some of these techniques have been changed so check with your instructor before quoting Gen Choi from this video. And in many cases there was no right or wrong answer on how a technique is to be performed. Gen Choi himself would show different variations at different courses. And he modified techniques over time too.
General Choi was most gracious and generous with his time, and was always careful to repeat his key points so they were clear. Sometimes though he would not quite understand what was being asked and go on a bit of a tangent. It was tricky to try and push for an answer sometimes without being disrespectful, so I would normally just stand and wait for as long as I could comfortably get away with – but sometimes eventually you just had to bow and sit down.
Here is some classic (never before seen) footage of the 1994 ITF World Champs in Malaysia. It is 42 minutes of video that gives an idea of what this tournament was like.
Some people say it was the best World Champs ever. Some say the worst. Anyway – it was big! They had the opening ceremony in an outdoor arena with demonstrations from all the main countries.
You will see 3 minutes in the now infamous bout between a Kiwi Matt and Master Mark Hutton (then a 4th dan) where the Kiwi broke his nose – effectively counting him out of the patterns competition later in the tournament. Master Hutton never lets us forget that one.
An infamous day in ITF History…
Much has been written about this day – the 13th Congress of the International Taekwon-Do Federation held in Rimini, Italy 6th July 2001.
Nearly 20 years has passed and now for the first time we can show video footage of this meeting.
So what actually happened? Who was there? Was it really the “start of the end”.
