The last day of gruelling competition yielded some pleasing results for the Aussies with top honours going to Great Britain and Chinese Taipei in the finals.

Dana Cleary was the only Australian fighter to make it through to the gold medal round, muscling through earlier opponents to secure a spot in the finals.

Pre-fight apprehension stifled her game somewhat when she came up against Rounan Liu in the gold-medal round. Her Chinese Taipei adversary drew first blood as the fight commenced and controlled the distance throughout the match.

The scores remained at 1-0 until the referees called time in round three, leaving Cleary with a silver medal in the over 63kg division. Advancing on yesterday’s dismal progress, Britain’s Aaron Cook took onlookers by storm as he beat the odds to win against Junior World silver medalist, Maojie Sun.

The 16-year-old from Dorchester said he’d fought and lost to Sun in the recent Junior World Championships and was determined to teach his old foe a lesson.

“There’s a voice in your head that tells you to stop and then there’s a part of you that says keep going,” Cook later said of his persistence.

Sun, a patient counter-fighter, picked his shots with clockwork precision, and lured Cook into a series of painful body blows.

A crowd-stunning head kick leveled the scores in round 2, providing a badly needed second wind for the Brit, who gathered momentum and powered ahead.

Despite fatigue and exhaustion which left both fighters doubled over, Cook found strength from his coach, who was yelling “get up, get up” from the corner. Sun tried to close the points gap to no avail, as Cook ran out the clock and sealed his victory at 10:7.

Throwing his headgear into the crowd and collapsing to the mat, the tourist will go home with an AYOF gold medal.

Despite today’s losses, Australia still topped the overall medal tally with 14 medals in the Taekwondo. China followed behind on 9, Chinese Taipei finished with 8 and Great Britain came last with 2 medals.

Yoni Bashan
AYOF