Woolley lands first gold at new weight
JACK Woolley secured his first gold medal at the Senior -58kg weight since moving up late last year when South Dublin Taekwondo returned to Innsbruck for the World Ranking Austrian Open.
More importantly 10 World and Olympic ranking points were added to his collection by the close of proceedings.
Starting as the Number Two seed in the event, Woolley received a bye in Round One before facing off against 2017 European bronze medallist Hüseyin Canan of Germany in the last 16, carding a 25-5 win.
The quarter final pitched him against German opposition once again as he recorded a 21-0 victory over another 2017 European bronze medallist Spirdon Nitsas.
With a medal secured, the Tallaght man took on Egyptian Mohammed Farag, the reigning African Championships silver medallist and former World bronze medallist.
A 17-4 victory secured Jack a berth in the decider against the USA’s Damina Villa [formerly of Mexico] who boasts World, Pan-American and Grand Prix medals
He took an early lead and was 6-3 up when the match was stopped due to an accidental injury to Woolley’s eye.
After medical attention, the match resumed and the Dubliner managed to draw level at 8-8 after the regulation three rounds.
Golden Point
One final Golden Point round was added which ended with no score, but as Woolley had eight contacts to the protector of Villa against his two, the match was awarded to the South Dublin star.
He was joined by his Coach Dylan Leonard for the event who also took charge of coaching other SDTKD up and coming fighters, Ryan Doyle and Adam Nugent who both lost their opening bouts, in which they met medallists in their first round.
Doyle is making good in-roads to the -45kg Cadet since crossing over from other martial arts, and Nugent, who is still a junior, moved up to -54kg Senior for the experience.
One final guest addition to the team was USA Olympic hopeful Ara White, who came to Dublin to train with SDTKD Club in advance of a series of events in the coming weeks.
She secured a bronze medal in a very competitive -62kg female division and both she and Woolley will now travel to the Rome Grand Prix this coming weekend, the World Taekwondo Europe Multi Games Championships in Plodiv, Bulgaria the week after before finishing up with the Luxembourg Open the week after.
Ryan Doyle will re-join the team in Luxembourg and Adam Nugent also travels to Bulgaria as well as Luxembourg.
TAGS Sport
