Athens pt1

My Trip To Athens

Storytime

part 1

Hello everyone and happy holidays. In this blog,

I am writing about my trip to Athens and my Taekwondo Games.

The Experience of the games

The purpose of my trip was Taekwondo. we had booked tickets for 4 days as we didn't know
when our matches were as they could've been on either of the 3 days of the tournament. It just
so happened that we all played on the first day and we had another two free to ourselves.
We arrived on Wednesday and we had to weigh in that same day which meant I couldn't eat until after my weigh in because I was worried I wouldn't make weight... 
That night we went for dinner and I got to eat as much as I desired, haha. I got to bed early that night in order to feel fresh the next morning. 

this is the stadium

I woke up that day, feeling a bit anxious, but I was told that it was okay to feel just a bit anxious as it gives you that rush of adrenaline you need. It was about a 15-minute drive from the home we were staying in, to the stadium. It was held in the Olympic wrestling stadium situated in Ano Liosia, a bit of a doggy area of Athens but it didn’t matter to me.

So as we entered a cold gush of air gently touched my face and woke me up, making me realize that I am about to do what I came to do and what I was prepping, sweating and crying for these past months.

One of our guys was up first playing on mat 1. He played a good game and won his first match. Then the other guy we were with, played his game and sadly lost. That’s just the thing, you see, with taekwondo you never can guarantee if you’re going to win or lose... You have just about 6 minutes to determine how and what you’re going to do in your match, to try to get to the next round. If you lose your game, that’s it you’re out.

It was finally my turn to fight. I got to my game and was playing with a girl from a team I hadn’t heard of before so I didn’t know what she played like. I got onto the mat, saw her; she was shorter than me, which was an advantage for me. We started playing and I got 2 points to the chest, followed by another 1 from one of her penalties. I gave her a point from one of my penalties but the ending score wasn’t anything spectacular but I did win by a couple of points.

My next game was in about an hour from then and I was playing with a girl that I saw downstairs in the training room warming up with me. I went out to play feeling a tad more anxious as she was quite tall, taller than me. I had a strategy set in my mind and I had to stick to that in order to win. We started the game and she got a header which meant +3 points and was in the lead, I got a few chest points but she got even more, head points. I was loosing but I had to keep going. I was not going to stop! Even though there was no way I could beat her, I kept going. She kicked me hard in the nose and the referee signaled a knockout but I stood tall and yelled out loud making them aware I was not finished! The game was over, I had lost. But I was proud that I fought so hard.

This is Taekwondo, It’s “the power of the draw” as you may play with a competitor with no experience or with one who plays these kinds of games simultaneously.

It is also about how experienced you are. As I mentioned, the experience is the most important part of playing a sport. Living on an island, you are limited to the things and places you can go. And especially living in a small village, in which you are part of a small team you don’t have the opportunities to flourish. You are also surrounded by financial difficulties, as our team doesn’t have sponsors who provide enough money for us, and cover our costs so we have to pay for a lot of the expenses ourselves and by expenses, I mean plane tickets, a place to stay, a car, plus some extras. So we were on a budget and we have to make our stay worth it and it’s so much more pressure prepping for the match. This isn't an excuse for us though, we try our hardest.

excuse the terrible pic but this
was me in the trill of it all..

Now, we are just as good as the other athletes that were there but we had less experience so others who had more, had the upper hand.

Overall, though my trip was eventful, I fought as hard as I could and even though we didn’t get a medal this time we did our best and truly if you’re only doing a sport as a hobby, it’s all that matters.