Nino Ontoy represented the island at the British Taekwondo National Poomsae Championships at the University of Worcester Arena recently.

The venue has been home to the championships since 2019, providing state-of-the-art facilities for the most prestigious and high-quality competition of poomsae event on the calendar in the UK.

Manx Taekwondo’s Ontoy was the only athlete from the Isle of Man because of the proximity of the event to the British National 2023 (Kyorugi - Sparring) event which most Manx Taekwondo athletes participated in.

The first gold medal came from his pair category with Natasha Wilson from Central Taekwondo Academy.

They were tied with another pair for first place during the semi-finals, but in the final they managed to perform better with perfect synchronicity which brought them to the top to grab the gold.

The second gold came from Ontoy’s team category with Oluwatimilehin Akinrele from Nomad Taekwondo and Tom Ahnstrom from Dorset TKD. They performed very well as a team and sailed through the competition with no difficulty as they clinched first place.

The third gold came from his individual performance in the under-30 age category. At the start of the competition, he felt pressure to deliver the victory having lost in his last international competition with the same top three opponents.

In the semi, he distanced himself from a rival by only 1.03 which was close, therefore he tried his very best to improve his scores in the final.

He competed last since he was first in the semi-finals and performed with power and accuracy. When the result came out from the screen, he was delighted and relieved to discover his score was good enough to secure gold.

This is the third time Ontoy has been crowned national taekwondo poomsae champion in three categories: individual, pair and team.

Nino would like to thank his parents Dom and Josefa for all their support, his club instructor Master Rod Nielsen and coach James Hewitt, plus a special thanks to Master Kim and the high-performance coaches at British Taekwondo Poomsae. He would also like to thank everyone that travelled with the team and to all at Manx Taekwondo.

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