Vipin Sharma, Hetush Gupta and Prem Kumar Gotwani will take home with them one gold, two silver and one bronze medals after winning in the sparring and poomsea categories at the TNZ Open Championship at the North Shore Event Center recently in NZ. Beating fighters from international teams, the Indian trio is happy, but not satisfied.
“We always want to continue to get better and set the bar a higher,” said the soft spoken Vipin Sharma, grinning from ear to ear. The software developer from New Delhi trains for anywhere between four to five hours every day. He almost had to give up the sport once, after a ligament tear forced him to take a break. It is fear he says that one has to overcome first. Everything else just falls into place after that. “I just focus on the fight.”
Each year Taekwondo New Zealand organises TNZ OPEN, one of the biggest annual sports event. New Zealand’s National Federation of Taekwondo (Taekwondo New Zealand) puts its all efforts in making this championship a grand success and a memorable event for all the participants from New Zealand and from overseas. This time the event was organized in The North Shore Event Center, which is one of the best sports arenas in entire Auckland with world class facilities.
This year a Taekwondo team from India (Youth Global Taekwondo Association) outperformed everyone’s performance and also attracted many admirers. The team led by the Team Coach Mr. Suresh Kumar Gotmani, 3rd Dan Black Belt from Kukkiwon, South Korea and former international player, and the team was managed by Mr. Deepak Kumar.
“The event was very well organised and we are always happy to participate in this tournament each year,” coach Gotmani said. “As far as fitness of the team goes, we’re in excellent form. Indians as a whole are waking up to a more health conscious life and the trend of Indian sportsmen and women outperforming international teams will continue.”