Moroccan gold for Woolley
SOUTH Dublin Taekwon-do’s Jack Woolley returned home from a very successful trip to Morocco, where he won gold and 20 World ranking points in the African WTF Presidents Cup.
The event which had double ranking points on offer, attracted athletes from all corners of the globe and saw Woolley beat some of the World’s best fighters in the WTF ‘Grade 2’ event.
Off the back of his gold medal win in Spain a fortnight beforehand, the Tallaght man was seeded Number One coming into this event and subsequently received a bye in the first round.
Morocco’s Hazma Boulahroud, having won his preliminary match 26-6, provided Woolley’s first challenge, but the Dubliner ended the match early with a blistering 23-4 TKO win, as his opponent threw in the towel in the first round.
The quarter-final pairings saw Woolley face another home competitor in Yassine Maach and he maintained his devastating form, again, forcing an early close to the fight after he opened up a 29-9 gap.
The semi-final led to a clash with a surprise unseeded fighter in Hamza Elhacham who earlier beat the African Games silver medallist Mohamed Grami of Tunisia.
This contest went the distance with Woolley emerging a 31-23 winner to set up a mouth-watering decider against the African Games Champion Moaz Nabil of Egypt.
Nabil, who is ranked sixth in the world, is currently the most prominent athlete in Africa and is likely to be in direct competition with Woolley for Olympic placing in 2020.
The two met in the final of the Moroccan Open in 2015, with Woolley scraping a victory in the closing exchange of the match.
This time around he emerged a more comfortable 19-9 winner – a major boost as he prepares for the European edition of the WTF Presidents Cup in Athens later this month.
Here a gold medal would see Woolley take away the 20 bonus Olympic points available to any Europeans who top the podium.
Looking back on his young protégé’s achieve-ment in Morocco, South Dublin Taekwondo Head Coach Robert Taaffe said “The objective of the trip was to ‘block’ any Africans from winning gold, as Africans winning the African Presidents Cup were to gain an additional 20 points allowance to their Olympic total this year.
“Each continent has a WTF Presidents Cup, which allows any gold medallist from that continent to apply their gold medal ranking points to their Olympic total if they achieve the maximum permitted of 40 per year.
“Jack has already reached his total of 40 for 2017, but wanted to ensure his closest adversaries could not exceed their 40 point allowance,” he explained.
