Greece Open G1
Jack Woolley travelled to Thessaloniki to participate in the Greece Open, an event in the World Taekwondo Federation ranking event series. The week previous he secured a well earned silver in Austria and the team were hopeful to carry through the momentum and secure a high finish in the massively competitive -54kg division.
Jacks draw led him to a 1/4 final outing with Cyprus National Team Player Pantelis Dimou which helped to fire up the young Jobstown native. The match was stopped by the referee 40 seconds into round 1 when Jack had a 10 point lead. His opponent was TKO’d when unable to continue after a standing count. This gave rise to a semi final meeting with recent European Presidents Cup Champion Ovidiu Trifan of Romania. Jack didn’t let the Romanians recent title deter him and started the match with an onslaught of kicks. With the score at 17-4 the match was stopped early at the end of the second round as the score gap exceeded 12 points. Now guaranteed at least a silver Jack was hoping it would be ‘third time lucky’ when he drew #1 seed Armin Hadipour Seighalani of Iran in the final who he fought in two finals previously (Croatia & UAE). The 21 year old Iranian who has never once been beaten in his career at -54kg continued his gold streak winning the title by 13-2. Jack, 17, travelled to Greece with his Club & National Coach Robert Taaffe who commented shortly after the event, ‘I know Jack is gutted, but as a coach it is not a bad place to be if your player is annoyed at a silver at a Ranking event. The score line flattered the Iranian, Jack was in the game throughout and we were unlucky a few new strategy attempts were delivered excellently but didn’t quite register the correct impact requirements. Armin has millions of dollars behind him, and is number one in Iran where there are millions of fighters, with Taekwondo on national tv like Match of the Day, he is a full time professional athlete he just won the Rio test event and the Asian Championships, we barely have a few cents to rub together, but we are on his tail! We travel to the best tournaments to face the best fighters, and a loss is only a loss of there is nothing learned’
