Online competition a welcome relief for poomsae exponents
PETALING JAYA: National poomsae athletes will finally get to strut their stuff albeit in a different environment.
Although they will be performing for the Online 2020 World Taekwondo Asia Poomsae Championships, coach Yap Yih Ting said the competition is a welcome relief as it restores some form of normalcy and help his charges, who have been training at the National Sports Complex since Oct 14, stay positive in the face of adversity.
The championships was scheduled to be held in Herning, Denmark, in May but was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Only individual events will be held leaving 2019 Philippines SEA Games mixed pair gold medal winners – Jason Loo and Nurul Hidayah Karim – to compete separately.
“We need to submit the videos of their performance by Friday in the preliminary rounds and they will announce the results after two weeks. And if they progress, there will be a live online performance with online judging,” said Yih Ting.
“Apart from Jason and Nurul, we have also included Sara Yap and newcomer Nur Humaira Abdul Karim.
“The intensity will be different when you do the moves on video as you cannot see how your opponents are performing.
“So it takes away some edge from your performance but we have no choice and just do what’s needed.”
Yih Ting revealed that the preliminary results will be out on Nov 12 with the final held two days later.
“We don’t know how many countries are participating.
“We also don’t know how well prepared our opponents are. Normally, in competitions we could gauge them based on their warm-ups so in this competition, we are in the dark,” he said.
“I just want to gauge how the training has been for our athletes in this competition. So we are not setting any targets.”