Clinton Dickerson - 2010-04-22 14:17:02

Training with Sensei Dave Hazard 2010

Clinton Dickerson - 2009-12-03 09:07:50

Course Calendar

Clinton Dickerson - 2009-06-21 12:55:18 (Not Approved)

KARATE KIDS BATTLING ON

Clinton Dickerson - 2009-06-21 11:23:46 (Not Approved)

Evening Herald (Wednesday 3 December 2008)

EAMON CARR FINDS OUT ABOUT SOME OF OUR TOP ATHLETES WHO HAVE TO BATTLE FINANCIAL HARDSHIP JUST TO COMPETE

IMAGINE you're a sports person who has spent years perfecting your skills, working on your fitness and becoming the best in the country in your division. Then you get called upon to represent Ireland in an important international competition.

It would be a dream come true. But there's a problem. You're told you've got to find the money to pay your own expenses: airline fares, hotel costs, transportation, food etc. There would be public uproar if this happened to an Ireland footballer, an Irish rugby player or one of our boxing Olympians. Pay to play sounds like a joke, right? But this is the reality that faces those elite karate exponents who carry the Irish tricolour with pride in international competitions.

Karate, you say - no-one's interested in that. But you're wrong. Internationally, karate is a huge sport. In Spain, the King is the Honorary President of the Spanish Federation. Before Yugoslavia disintegrated, karate was considered the national sport, and it remains huge in all of the new countries as well as across Europe.

In this country, there are over 10,000 active karate participants affiliated to the Official National Amateur Karate Association of Ireland.

Talk to those involved in karate in Ireland and you'll hear plenty of stories of sacrifice and dedication. You'll also hear tales of how Irish karate competitors do us proud overseas against the odds. Like in the European Senior Championships in Greece a few years ago when a five-man Ireland team travelled with two coaches.

The English squad was in Athens acclimatising for 28 days before the Irish arrived. They had a full backroom team that included a team manager, five coaches, a doctor, a physio and a sports psychologist. That year they had grant aid of £5.5m (€6.5m).

The impoverished Ireland team travelled on the Wednesday morning to compete over the next four days. As the team was preparing to board the flight, one Irish athlete received a call from his boss to say he couldn't take the weekend off to represent Ireland. If he wasn't back in time, he'd lose his job. And that year the French national karate association had a staggering €25m in grant aid.

Despite the impossible-looking odds, and competing the day after they arrived, two of the Irish team caused a major upset by beating their English opponents. I also hear stories of Vincent O'Hora, an elite Irish karate athlete who is based in Manchester and who has to fly back and forth to Dublin at his own expense to attend all the squad training sessions. His peers are in awe of O'Hora's commitment and talent, citing him as one of our best prospects for European and World medals.

To find out more about the sport in Ireland I spoke to Peter Coyle, president of the Official National Amateur Karate Association of Ireland (ONAKAl), who tells me: “Ireland is one of the main founder groups of European karate. We were one of the six signatories at the foundation of the European Karate Federation in 1962. We've been there from the start.”

ONAKAl is the sport's national governing body by appointment of the National Sports Council.

Having been a competitor and a national coach, Coyle is currently national chief referee and president of the association. “Last year we brought Irish teams to represent Ireland at 11 international events.” he says.
“That's not including international coaching seminars, referees' courses or anything like that.”
So how much funding does the sport receive from the Sports Council, I enquire? Coyle doesn't want to seem ungrateful but there's no disguising his embarrassment.
“When you take flights and hotels into consideration, anyone of those competitive events costs us between €6,000 and €15,000.” he begins.
“And the Sports Council has been giving us what support they can and we're grateful for that.” So how much do you receive, I persist.
“€13,500 is the most we've ever received,” says Coyle.

KITTY

So how does ONAKAl manage to continue to run the organisation and compete and represent Ireland in international competitions?
“When the money is in the the kitty we provide the athletes with part of it.” says Coyle. “Unfortunately we have very limited resources. If they are privileged enough to be called to represent Ireland abroad, they then have the task of raising the money themselves or getting their clubs to raise the money.
“We keep things going and try to keep abreast of everything that's happening in terms of the most up-to-date techniques and developments in sports science and so on.
“But it's difficult to compete with people who have the resources they have in England, France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere. They are on huge money. All we'd ask is our competitors are given the opportunity of starting on a level playing field with the other competitors.”

Yet, despite the fact the sport is totally under-funded and under-resourced, Irish karate is well respected on the international scene.

We do quite well,” says Coyle. “Our guys have emerged as medal winners at the highest levels, apart from World Championships.”

But it's at the two major competitions where Coyle and his cohorts dream about raising the Irish flag the World Championships and the European Senior Championships.

“Our guys are amateurs,” says Coyle. “The people they are meeting are full-time, professionally supported athletes. If you're at the World Championships, you don't get any easy draws. “Everyone you're going to be confronting is a national champion. You don't get any dummies.”

The sport's latest initiative is to follow the template laid down by our successful boxing Olympic medal winners.

“We're going down the scientific route right now,” says Coyle. “As the boxers have done. The boxers have proved the worth and value of going down that road. We are modelling our procedures on the procedures adopted by the boxers. All our athletes are going through all the tests and availing of all the most technologically advanced procedures.”

With half of ONAKAI's elite squad already tested on the VO2Max testing system at DCU, the initial findings are highly positive.

“The athletes who've been tested so far are showing considerably higher performances than the average Olympic athlete,” says Coyle proudly. “The National Coaching Training Centre at Limerick University have focussed on our coaches and how to bring them along to bring our competitors along and we've benefitted from that no end. “It's been the best thing that happened our organisation.”

OPTIMISM

There's an electrical charge of optimism running through the ranks at present. “We have the know-how,” says Coyle. “We have the commitment. We have the ability. Our people are winners. What we need is support. We will win. No question about it. We have the ability to beat the world beaters.”

Although karate is not yet an Olympic sport, becoming designated has been a close-run thing.

There is a ceiling on the number of sports that the Olympic Council endorses. For a new one to be added, some discipline has to be dropped. The last time a vote was taken at an IOC meeting, karate lost out by just two votes from a voting panel of 164.

Coyle is adamant that should the sport become an Olympic discipline, Ireland will be among the medal winners.

When pressed to make predictions, he mentions two young athletes from Slane who will be representing Ireland at the 36th European Junior Championship in Paris at the end of January.

“There's no doubt that Shane Carolan and Mark Kenny will be European and World beaters,” he says. “Those guys do a five-mile run every morning before they go to school. They're just 17. We're not expecting them to come home with medals from Paris this time because it's their first major European event. They'll be confronted by the best people in the world and in front of a 10,000 indoor audience. You have to become conditioned to that. "They are physically and mentally prepared for it but you can't prepare them for the big arena, the big crowd, the television cameras and all those distractions. Very few people go into those and win first time off. “But they are great prospects for the future.”

You've got to be brave and highly skilled and focussed to be a top karate kid. “It is very intense sport,” says Coyle. “Don't forget, some of these guys are fighting with gloves that are just a few millimetres thick. '”And these guys would be capable of killing you with a punch. The expertise that has to be developed is such that they have to be able to deliver what the referee and judges perceive to be a full delivery that were it to make contact to the head or a specific target would actually inflict severe damage. If it's anything less you won't get scored for it. “But they also have to be able to exercise such control that they can make surface contact to your skin without actually doing damage. “Most of the guys are well enough conditioned to be able to absorb considerable impact to the body without showing any sign of injury. But at any time there is a risk of concussion. Unfortunately, it does sometimes happen and that's what you try to avoid. The skills involved are very demanding.”

A men's senior bout lasts three minutes, which might seem short to the uninitiated. But as Coyle points put: “If you're at an international event, you could be on the mat 12 or 15 times before you get through to the medals. And that's during one day. So you have to be super-fit.

“If you've finished a three minute bout of high-intensity stuff with someone who is the top guy in his country, you had better be good. You had better be sharp and you had better be fit.”

Calendar for Kata training

Clinton Dickerson - 2009-04-03 22:37:29 (Not Approved)

Irish kata squad training with Sensei Mike Hogan 2009.