Wednesday, May 24th 2006

ETU has finished its General Assembly in Hilton Hotel/Bonn today. Nearly every member association had sent its delegates to this meeting and together with the board and other officials about 100 people were gathering at the Hilton conference room in Bonn.

ETU-President Athanasios Pragalos presided the meeting and a number of important decisions were made:

1) ETU statutes have been amended and adapted in certain parts and the GA accepted these changes without a vote against.

2) The hosting city of the European Olypmic Qualification Tournament for Peking 2008 will be Istanbul/Turkey. Turkey remained victorious over France with Paris and Germany with Ingolstadt. The date of the Olympic Qualification Tournament will be January 25th - 27th 2008.

3) The European Cadet Championships in 2007 will go to Hungary (Budapest). Turkey as the secong candidate withdrew in friendship after having won the selection fot the Olympic Qualification Tournament. The Cadet Championships will take place in Budapest on July 7th and 8th 2007.

4) The European Poomse Championships in 2007 found no hosting city so far. The ETU board will keep an eye on that event and try to find a hosting city as soon as possible.

ETU Secretary General Gerrit Eissing made public that the upcoming European Taekwondo Championships will be the largest ever with a total number of 42 participating countries and 432 competitors.

A Sanction Committee was set up in accordance with the WTF rules to guarantee strict compliance with the rules and to sanction immediately any misbehaviour or bad conduct of players, coaches or officials. The members of the Sanction Committee are:

The Arbitration Board for the European Championships has also been set up:

Tomorrow the drawing lots will take place and on Friday the competition will start.

Good Luck to all competitors!

ETU held it's Media Seminar for sports journalists at the Hilton Hotel in Bonn today. WTF President Dr. Chungwon Choue gave an opening speech and greeted the present media specialists and then Mr. Luc Sougne, the Chairman of the ETU Public Relations Committee, led through the lectures and information speeches.

The speakers informed about Taekwondo history and development as well as the evolving competition rules, about views about Taekwondo from the coach and the competitor and about the status of the upcoming electronic protector which should be introduced next year at the Taekwondo World Championships in Beijing as a test event for the 2008 Olympic Games.

After completing this seminar successfully ETU has decided to step further on the road to better information for the media in promoting Taekwondo as a modern global and exciting sport.

At 2.00 p.m. the head of team meeting and the drawing lots will take place at the Novotel in Bonn, just opposite from the Hardtberg sports hall. Everybody is awaiting this with great excitement.

Today the European Taekwondo Championships started with a big bang: when the staff of the organizer entered the hall in the morning, the computers and match organizing hardware including big screen monitors for the display of match points were gone! A gang of outlaws has used the darkness of the night to break into the hall and steal nearly all of the necessary equipment for match management. Who could think that it would be necessary to guard the hall with extra security during the night - in the middle of Germany?

In a herculenean effort the DTU (the German Taekwondo Federation) managed to get the competition running by organizing new hardware including scoreboards and with a mere 2 hour delay the first fights were on the mat. This championship remains under an unlucky star so far because after the forced change of location from Düsseldorf to Bonn just a few weeks from the beginning of the games now this major problem hampered the smooth run of the competition. Still the DTU does a great work in managing those emergency procedures and the general mood in the hall is one of great friendship and cooperation.

Lets's hope that this will continue until the final game on Sunday and that there will be no more further excitement besides the 'normal high temperature' when strong competitors from different countries meet on the competition floor.

At 06.00 p.m. the official opening ceremony took place and the first winners of this European Championship were decided. Before that a demonstration of new electronic body protectors manufactured by Daedo company was staged and caused big interest by the spectating crowd. Another highlight was the excellent demo of the KTA demonstration team from Korea.

Winners of the first day at the European Taekwondo Championships 2006:

And here are some more impressions of the hall, the VIP tribune and the fights:

The second day of the competition started. Today six more categories will be played.

The hosting country Germany received its first gold medals today. The german kicking ladies and fighting gentlemen were equally successful and brought one gold each to the german records. Spain scored again for gold today and took the lead in the overall medal ranking (see below).

Winners of the second day at the European Taekwondo Championships 2006 are:

The last day of the competition has started. We will provide you with the results soon. The last five categories are: