South Dublin Taekwondo

After a month away from competition and an appetite to kick, our January Sportsperson of the month reminded us why he is one of the best regarded taekwondo fighters in the world today. Jack was deployed to the Sofia Open by his club South Dublin Taekwondo (SDTKD), a World Ranking event with valuable Ranking points available to assist qualification for Tokyo 2020.
Jack went into the draw as seed 1 due to his current World Ranking giving him a now expected bye in the first round and time to watch his opponent in their preliminary bout.
Germany’s Spiridon Nitsas win the right to face the 18 year old tallaght athlete, where the match was one sided ending 21-1 in Woolley’s favour, automatically stopped by the referee at the end of the 2nd of 3 rounds as the score gap exceeded 20.
There were more score gaps to come as Jack completed an Italian Job in the quarters and semis, beating Italy’s  Antonio Temante 32-2 by point gap in the quarter final, and proceeding to beat his national counterpart Teodoro Ravone 31-1 once again with the referee stopping the match early.
This led to a final showdown with seed number 3 Dionysios Rapsomanikis of Greece in the final which proved to be a closer affair ending 19-12 bringing home another world ranking gold medal to Tallaght. The event in Bulgaria is the beginning of another attack on World Ranking points where jack will now go to Eindhoven for the Dutch Open this coming weekend, the Belgian open the week after, and rounding off his quad of events in Alicante, Spain the week after. Jacks coach Robert Taaffe summarised, ‘it was a solid performance by jack today, in his first 3 matches he scored a blistering 84 points and was only hit once. The final brought a technical challenge that jack managed very well and this will kick off the international circuit of events coming up throughout the next few months.’