Light Weights Ready to Fight

Today, on May 12, the 2015 World Championships are going to officially begin. On the first day of the Championships there will be preliminary contests in the women’s -46 kg and men’s -58 kg. A Grand Opening Ceremony will close the day.

The preliminary contests will open the World Taekwondo Championships, first in the Russian history. During the morning program, Chelyabinsk dojang will see -46kg women and -58kg men. The fights will be held from 9:00 am until 12:30 pm and from 2:00 pm until 5:00 pm.

Kyriaki Kouttouki is the world ranking leader and the first to perform at the tournament. She is one of the medal contenders in the women’s program. According to the draw, the other four seeded are Yvette Jong (CAN), Iris Tang Sing (BRA) and Maria Smirnova ((RUS), who is 19^th in the world ranking. However, the defending bronze medalist, Fadia Farhani (TUN) is a hidden favorite in this weight category.

90 athletes are going to perform in the men’s -58 kg weight category. The contests promise to be unpredictable for several reasons. One of them is that there is no single leader in this weight category. Besides, the previous World Championships’ medalists are skipping the tournament. Team South Korea’s coaching staff decided to give some rest to the defending World Champion in this weight category, Cha Tae-moon. Cho Gang-min is going to perform instead of him.

The World Ranking leader, Farzan Ashour Zadeh Fallah, represents a strong Iranian national team. Levent Tuncat (GER) and the 2014 European Champion Rui Braganca (POR) are among the three seeded thanks to their high World Ranking positions. Ruslan Poiseev will try to defend Russia’s honor. These are going to be the third Championships for him, although he didn’t manage to win any medal at the previous ones.

The 2015 World Championships Grand Opening Ceremony will take place shortly after the preliminary contests that end at 5:00 pm. It will start at 6:00 pm and will last for one hour and a half. The first set of medals will be contested tomorrow, on May 13.  The final matches in the men’s -58kg and women’s -46 kg will take place during the evening program.