Karatekas excel after working hard
Anthony successfully defended his men’s open division title after winning it two years ago in Malta.
There are not too many things that feel better than seeing your hard work pay off.
That is what the Dan Triangle Club’s Christopher Anthony and Christopher Thela feel like.
After months of training hard for the KWF Karate World Cup, the pair brought home gold medals from the tournament in Japan recently.
Anthony successfully defended his men’s open division title after winning it two years ago in Malta.
“The feeling is always great,” he said.
“I didn’t expect to win this time. I think that made it more special. I was quite negative, I don’t know why but I felt the pressure because I won the previous one.”
Also read: Dan Triangle gets 29 golds
Thela saw his hard work paying off as he had to always train after spending a lot of time in traffic coming from work in Pretoria.
The victory in the veterans (age 50 to 59) category has helped him believe that he can win more tournaments.
“For me it’s inspiration to keep training more,” he said. “I can now see that I can do it and I think I can do more. I’ve learnt how to look at my opponents and see what the opponent does. You need to be smart and outsmart your opponent.”
Anthony believes his experience helped him get through the tough moments in the tournament.
“I don’t think I would have done as well as I have if I didn’t have the experience,” said Anthony, who is also a sensei. “In some of my fights I was 1-0 down and if I didn’t have the experience to help me remain calm I would have lost it. The experience helped out a lot.”
That same experience was also beneficial to his clubmates.
“It’s an inspiration. You know that you’ve got somebody who has achieved it before you,” Thela said. “So now you watch when you are training with him. You can see the way he moves. You must try to match that. So when you are at the world championships you think ‘this is how he does it’.”
Thela has said that his next goal is to reach his black belt while Anthony aims to earn his fourth dan.
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