Junior taekwondo team from Banbury return from Scottish championships with collection of medals

The team of four youngsters all train at the Banbury TKD taekwondo club, which is based out of the Spiceball Leisure Centre.

Fraser Talbot, 14, Morgan Jones, 13, Holly Jones, 10 and Zac Jones, 8 all made the long way to Motherwell to compete at the annual Taekwondo Association of Great Britain Scottish Open Championships on Sunday, September 8.

The many hours of travelling were made worthwhile for the young martial artists as they returned from the competition with a collection of 13 medals between them.

Around 600 taekwondo students from across the UK entered the championships, recognised as one of the biggest amateur martial arts events north of the border.

All four of the Banbury students competed in performance patterns where they had to display both attack and defence movements as if in combat.

They also took part in sparring matches against practitioners of a similar age, weight and belt class to themselves.

Fraser claimed the club’s first gold medal by winning the boys’ individual patterns competition, with Morgan taking home the silver medal.

Holly had a fantastic competition, winning a gold medal in the patterns competition and winning almost all of her sparring contests without conceding a point to claim gold.

The boys also had success in sparring, with Fraser earning the silver medal in his category, Morgan taking bronze and Zac narrowly missing out on a medal in a close quarter-final bout.

The tag team sparring competition saw Fraser and Morgan team up with a local lad to win a gold and Holly joined two local girls to win another gold.

Zac also teamed up with some local Scottish taekwondo practitioners to win a well-deserved bronze medal in the boys’ peewee division.

It was more success for Banbury in the synchronised team patterns event, with Fraser, Morgan and Holly teaming up to take home another gold medal.

Mark Robson, instructor at Banbury TKD, said: “Holly’s four golds and Fraser’s three golds and a silver make them the most successful students Banbury TKD have ever fielded at a national level event.”