Two City West Taekwondo rising stars will be reaching for gold when they head to Sydney this week to compete at the sixth annual Oceania taekwondo championships.
Matthew Farrell and Bailey Lewis secured positions on the Australian taekwondo team after a selection competition in Perth in April.
That was Australia’s largest tournament, bringing together students from both Taekwondo Australia and Sports Taekwondo Australia to vie for top honours.
Farrell will compete in the head contact cadet division for 12 to 14 year olds, while Lewis will compete in the head contact junior division for 15 to 17 year olds.
The duo, out of the Hoppers Crossing-based City West, will be part of a national team that will compete against practitioners from 14 countries from the Oceania region, including traditional rivals New Zealand.
City West head instructor Frank De Pasquale and tournament team manager Jerry Ismail are keen to see how their students stack up on a big stage.
“To be internationally competitive with the rest of the world, we need more fights from higher-level competitions in Australia and overseas,” Ismail said.
The championships will take place tomorrow and Friday and will be a key lead-up event to next year’s Pacific Games and, looking even further ahead, to the Rio Olympics in 2016.
