Four junior athletes aged between 9 and 14 have successfully stole the show in Limassol, Cyprus this weekend. Lyndon Mallia, the youngest athlete of the team soon became the centre of attraction with his impeccable form, eye-direction, posture and dynamics of his karate when he outperformed athletes from Cyprus, Romania, and Israel in this international goodwill junior traditional karate event held by the Cyprus Traditional Karate Federation. The Romanian coach of one of the most successful clubs in Europe, having produced hundreds of world class athletes and medal winners in traditional karate, said of Lyndon, “This boy is smart. He has the making of a future champion”. He even spent time chatting with Lyndon after the competition.
Lyndon has for the past three years been coached by Vince Cutajar of the Hiroshi Shirai Karate Club of Zebbug. Mr Cutajar has just graduated san-dan (third dan) and is a qualified coach under the Coach Certification Programme of the Traditional Karate Federation of Malta.
The other gold medal was won with style by Luke Vella in the 14-15 year old category. In the same category, and also a finalist was Liam Tabone. Liam was in first place in the eliminations. In the finals, he started off with an advanced kata, Sochin, normally performed by fourth dan black belts. He is very passionate about this kata and has competed in local competitions with it as tokui-kata (preferred kata), out-marking even many seniors. Luke on the other hand opted for Bassai-dai, a kata he has just practised endlessly for his black belt examination with Masao Kawasoe, the 8th dan master of Shotokan Karate. It was a close encounter with even a Cypriot in the final performing Kanku-dai. The panel of judges ranked Luke Vella as the winner, the Cypriot athlete won silver and Liam Tabone bronze. Both these athletes are students of the Muteki Karate Studio which has a long tradition in producing quality athletes. Their coach is Omar Azzopardi, himself a product of the same club since he was nine years old.
The other athlete in the team, was the 13 year-old Manuela Zammit student of Lynette Zerafa. She is a well-known face in local competition who has also just graduated first dan, demonstrated an optimum level of kata performing her favourite Heian Godan for the elimination and Bassai Dai for the final. She came in a tie with the athlete from Cyprus and she had to perform again. The panel of judges gave a three-two vote in favour of the Cypriot. The technical director of the federation however strongly believes that Manuela is an athlete with far superior qualities in kata. She is dynamic in her power generation, and has geometry in her form that will surely give her the results she merits in the future.
The team returned from their weekend stay in Cyprus, by courtesy of the Mayor and Town Hall of Limassol.