County Durham teenage becomes youngest Senior National Champion
Jamie Abley the 16 year old Taekwondo Sport player from Spennymoor County Durham becomes the youngest senior national champion (-54Kg Category)
June 18/19 BTCB (NGB - Taekwondo) held the British National Championships at the National Cycling Centre (Velodrome) Manchester. This year the National Championships had the largest number of players (530) and received coverage in the National press and television (World Number 1 Sarah Stevenson appearing on the BBC News on the Saturday morning).
http://www.britishtaekwondo.org.uk/index.php?pagename=british-taekwondo-control-board-news&news_id=485 (record entries)
Jamie Abley the 16 year old martial artist from Spennymoor County Durham was competing at Junior -55Kg and Senior -54 Kg weight categories, looking to win his 4th and 5th National title and follow on from his recent success at the Dutch Master (Rotterdam) where he won both Junior -55Kg and Senior -54Kg titles.
http://www.ma-regonline.com/tournaments/results (Dutch Masters results) http://www.ma-regonline.com/results/201105_DutchMastersOpen2011.pdf
Belgium Open - youngest ever British player to win a Senior A Class medal at 16 years and 7 days old. Silver Medallist lost in the final against a Korean Professional League Player http://www.ma-regonline.com/results/201104_32ndBelgianOpen2011.pdf. An A Class tournament is an Olympic standard event and carries European and World Ranking points.
On the morning Jamie was competing in the Junior category and had three fights to win and produced three very strong performances to become Junior -55Kg British National Champion.
Winning the first fight 12-1 with the KO, the second fight 13-1 stopped his opponent on the 12 point rule and won the final 8-4 to become the Junior -55 Kg champion and win his fourth National Title.
On the afternoon Jamie was competing in the Senior category and had two fights to win as he had a bye in the first round and would meet Joel Jackson in the semi-final if Joel won his first round fight.
Jamie met Joel Jackson the 2009,2010 Senior National Champion in the semi-final. After three really tough rounds they finished level on 4-4 and went to golden point (first to score wins). Jamie used an aggressive front foot attack and scored the Golden point to hand Joel his first defeat at the British National Championships for three years.
http://www.britishtaekwondo.org.uk/index.php?pagename=british-taekwondo-control-board-news&news_id=490 (BTCB Nationals winners Senior and Junior)
To complete a remarkable weekend for Jamie his older brother Scott (19 years old) won the Bronze medal at -63Kg (three very hard fights and only losing by a narrow margin in the semi-final) and his sister Simone won the Children's +43 Kg National title - winning her first national title.