Tonight, olympic taekwondo started in Beijing.

First, let me say that it looks like fighting at the olympics would be AWESOME. There is one center stage, raised on a pyramid structure, with four corner judges sitting outside the yellow boundaries. The coach sits at the base of the pyramid while the two competitors fight, like gladiators on a pyre.

(from Day Life)

Tonight (rather, starting on Aug 20 at 9 AM Beijing time), the men’s and women’s fin/flyweight divisions fought. Included was American team member Charlotte Craig, the least spotlighted member of the US Olympian team, otherwise known somewhat simplistically as “All in the family.” You hear so much about the Lopezes that sometimes, it’s easy to overlook Charlotte, who also normally trains at a different studio (Jiro in LA, instead of Elite in Texas.)

But I have to say she came out blazing and her kicks were solid. You can see matches at nbcolympics.com, although I’m sure the finals matches will be much more interesting. I guess around this time (3 am) they are going to start the 2nd round of sparring, but I will probably be asleep soon, and will simply read about the results tomorrow.

I hope everyone gets a chance to watch the US team, as well as the other international superstars, fight through their brackets. On one hand, olympic taekwondo is such a high level of competition and is amazing to watch. On the other hand, you can really see that the basics we are learning are all that you need, but simply raised to a very high level of athleticism and experience. As we watched the match between Venezuela and Portugal, Master Sinn and I began to spar and kick hogu in my small studio apartment, trying to imitate the girls with the amazing left leg turning kicks. Yes, even the flyweight girls would beat me down.

The schedule and links to streaming taekwondo:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/taekwondo/index.html