Meet four of the Irish entrants to the WAKO Junior World Championship
Meet two sets of siblings who are part of the team representing Ireland at the Junior World Championship in kickboxing.
17-year-old Ronan Smith is one of the elder statesmen of the team. The leaving cert student has been fighting at home and abroad since his early teens and has been involved in the sport since the age of three.
His father initially intended to enrol Ronan’s older brother but the younger boy decided he wanted to take part too and has never looked back. The entire family have been bitten with the kickboxing bug - Ronan, his father and his two brothers are all black belts in the sport.
Speaking to breakingnews.ie Ronan discussed the level of commitment needed to excel at this level.
“It takes over half your life,” he said, “coming up to an event like this we are training seven days a week.”
With exams at the end of the year he says that his school aren’t too thrilled with him going to Italy for the week but says they also acknowledge his successes and added:
“They understand because they see we are coming home with medals.”
Ronan’s successes have helped pave the way for younger brother Eoghan. He is also facing exams next June, in his case the junior cert, but he is just as focused on the competition as his older brother.
Eoghan and Ronan both train at the Bushido Martial Arts club in Clondalkin, a club with an illustrious history. Head coach Roy Baker, is a previous WAKO European champion, and WKA and IASKA World champion.
Ilija Salerno, Elaine Small and Nicola Corbett have all been WAKO World champions and Darragh Geoghegan was WAKO European champion.
Also training there are another set of fighting siblings; Ross and Alexandra Brennan.
At 17 Ross will fight in the Junior section of the competition with Ronan and he described a similarly intense training regime:
“In the three months since we qualified it has been six to seven days a week every week.”
He also has experience of fighting abroad and is looking forward to seeing his younger sister experience it for the first time.
Alexandra has been kickboxing since the age of five and now at 13 is delighted to be joining her older brother at the World Championships for the first time.
Just four of the 97 athletes fighting in Irish colours this week. We wish them all the best and will be reporting on their progress during the week.
