Two local Taekwondo participants David xxx and Eliza yyy are coming back down
to earth after great success at the Taekwondo World Championships held in
Canada recently.

New Zealand junior coach Dave zzz says the competition was a lot of hard
work and huge days.

"We had to have them fed by 7am and three days competing finished at 6pm and
one day they didn't finish till 10.30pm."

The junior team came home from the world competition in third place.

"Last year we we're fourth so we're heading in the right direction."

Last year we came home with three gold, two silver and 12 bronze and this year
it was three gold, eight silver and three bronze.

Dave says both David and Eliza had great tournaments.

For David it was his third trip to the world champs and he came home with a
silver for individual power breaking, a gold for the power breaking team event,
bronze for team specialty and bronze for pre-arranged.

Eliza's trip to Canada was her first world champs and she came back with a gold
for individual power and silver for team power.

"When we did the selections Eliza was selected purely for power breaking so she
hasn't had a lot of variety to work with but has taken a lot of time working
with her technique."

Dave says both competitors will be eligible for the senior team next tournament
but he says they both definitely have a future with the world's competition.

This is the second year Dave has coached a world champion power breaker. Last
year his student Alicia qqq took out the gold medal.

Dave is now preparing for the next world champs in Argentina in 2009.

"Training for that starts next month. We always do very well in power and
specialty and this year we also did well in the pattern competition."

He is no putting together a development programme for sparring and has enlisted
the help of an overseas master.

"He is one of the recognised international coaches and is going to come to New
Zealand twice a year for camps."

Dave says between those camps it is up to the coaches to continue the training
and develop the sparring.

"I can see big gains in medals for sparring at the next tournament."

He says he had quite a young team this year so 90 percent of the team will now
go through this development team.

"We've also gone back to the last four Junior World CHampionship teams and
selected people to join the development team."

New Zealand has won the bid to host the 2011 world champs.