Stettler’s Dave Hargreaves has returned with a bronze medal from the World Tae-Kwon Do championships in Telford, England, with Cade Bengert, another local TKD practitioner, winning a second place but not a medal, at least not yet.
Hargreaves said he fought five bouts in the sparring section of the executive middle weight category, of which he won four, to claim the bronze medal.
Describing his first two fights with first and Argentinian and then and English competitor relatively easy, Hargreaves said his later bouts were quite memorable.
“My third fight was with a competitor from Wales and that one was a really good fight and it was pretty close. In my fourth fight, I was against one from Poland and I really enjoyed it.”
“The fifth fight for the silver medal was against England and my rival was very good with his timing and he was very quick and I lost that one with just a few points,” Hargreaves said.
Cade Bengert, the other member of the Canadian national team from Stettler won the second place in “musical” section, a category where the TKD practitioners choreograph their movements to a tune.
“In this championship, they first said that in the musical category there would be only gold medal, but now there are discussions going on whether to give medals to second and third place winners, too,” said Hargreaves.
Bengert also competed in sparring and traditional forms competition.
Asked what he felt to be the winner of a bronze medal in a world championship coming out of a small town in Alberta, “I was elated,” said Hargreaves.
“It was only six months ago that we put the team together and we worked extremely hard, basically putting three years of training into six months.”