Canada’s best young taekwondo athletes converge on Winnipeg for national championships

For the first time in 20 years, the Taekwondo Canada national championships are being held in Winnipeg.

That means 260 of the country’s elite youth athletes are spending the weekend at the RBC Convention Centre, vying for a medal and a spot on the podium.

“Anybody that comes through that’s competing at the national championships has a significant amount of talent and what I would say about the kids that are here now is, they’re tomorrow’s Olympians,” said Dave Harris, executive director of Taekwondo Canada.

And those chances are very real at the National Junior and Cadet Championship. Not only can winning athletes walk away with national titles, they can also leave with a coveted spot on Team Canada.

B.C.’s Josipa Kafadar, who is competing in Paris at this summer’s Olympics, knows exactly what it takes to make it to the top. She was at the event, alongside Winnipeg’s Skylar Park, to inspire the young athletes and tell them anything is possible.

“I’ve had multiple people say, ‘oh you can’t do it, or this statistically doesn’t make sense,’” recounted Kafadar. “But I just kind of believed in myself, even if the chances were very low, I still pushed for it because the chance is still a chance. Take it if you think you can.

“I’ve seen some very talented and familiar faces, but also some new faces that I haven’t seen before. I think taekwondo in Canada’s future has great potential to do great things.”

Kadafar qualified earlier this year for the Paris Olympics.

“It was an exciting experience,” she said. “You had to place top two at the Pan American qualifiers, which I did.”

Team Manitoba member, Adi Singh, 16, says getting to nationals is not easy. He says physical strength is only one component of training.

“It’s also a mental thing that needs to go into it because you need the confidence,” Singh said. “It’s also like a chess match in a way, where it’s like, you need to figure out what your opponent is doing, what they’re going to do. There’s a lot of things that go into it.

“I’m feeling confident, I’m ready. Hopefully I’ll do well.”

Singh lives and breathes taekwondo and wants to keep doing it for the foreseeable future.

“In the future, ideally, I want to keep competing until I’m really old, and maybe even coach in the future if I really want to.”

The national championship is the second major taekwondo event in Winnipeg this year after the Canadian Senior Kyorugi and Poomsae National Championships in March.

“It’s a growing thing for Winnipeg and Manitoba, and I feel like it’s super cool to just have it here,” Singh, a Winnipeg native, said of the national championship.