Farrell and Cahill strike gold for South Dublin

SHAUNA Farrell of South Dublin Taekwondo Club returned to the top of the podium at the Tallinn Open while clubmate Emma Cahill followed suit at the Polish Open in Warsaw.

Having won the -51kg Cadet title in the Estonian capital last year, Farrell went all the way in the – 59kg Cadet class this time around.

She emerged from her quarter final a 2-1 victor over France’s Fatima Mendy before dishing out a 2-0 defeat to Elinborg Kunoy Davadottir of the Faroe Islands in the penultimate rounds.

The SDTKD competitor was forced to dig deep for gold in the final by Mariia Leonova of Ukraine, recovering from a first-round point gap defeat, to clinch a superb victory.

Under the guidance of Coach, Dylan Leonard, she changed up her match play to take a 2-1 win, with the final round completed by video review on a clinical head shot that effectively secured her the title.

There were more medals won by SDTKD competitors in Estonia with silver for Jacqueline Rosales and bronze medals for Emma Cahill and Shae Yambao.

Earlier that week Tallinn also played host to the European Club Championships where club exploits included silver for Reiltin Salmon, bronze for Monika Ilieva, Farrell, Ryan Doyle, Cahill and Jack Woolley.

It did not stop there for Farrell as she landed a silver medal in the same weight division at the Polish Open in Warsaw A brace of 2-0 victories over Poland’s Wiktoria Wojcik and Austria’s Dania Jasaragic set her up for a title decider against Germany’s Viktoria Rucinski who claimed the gold.

It leaves Farrell on a sound footing ahead of her bid for gold at the European Cadet Championships to be held in Malta later this year.

Emma Cahill won gold at the Polish Open

Emma Cahill, meanwhile, secured gold in the -55kg Junior Division in the Polish capital kicking off her campaign with victory over Angeliki Georgiou of Greece in a match that was tied all the way up until the final bell.

Indeed, Cahill landed one final punch in the dying seconds – a point that was applied from a video review challenge – to progress to the last four where she overcame Natalie Sikyrova 2-0.

Lithuania’s Paulina Maminskaite represented the final obstacle barring her way to gold, but the SDTKD competitor surmounted it with a straight two-round triumph.

The club’s only two active seniors, Leroy Nsilu Dilandu and Ryan Doyle both reached the podium in the -74kg Senior Division. Both competitors had medalled at international ranking events at junior level, but had not yet reached the senior podium.

The two bronze medallists are now part of a very small group of Irish seniors who have medalled in Worlds ranking events – others from South Dublin being Jack Woolley and Shauna Bannon from her taekwondo days.

Other SDTKD podium[1]finishers over the weekend included Monika Ilieva and Reiltin Salmon who both secured bronze.