Team St. Maarten displays the medals they won at the USA International Martial Arts Festival in Orlando, Florida.
ST. PETERS—Team St. Maarten won so many gold medals at the at the USA International Martial Arts Festival in Orlando, Florida they lost count. Originally the team sent word back to the Friendly island that they had won 15 golds. On the recount it turned out the athletes from the King Yen Taekwondo School under the guidance of Grandmaster Theo Liu won 16 golds.
The team which faced athletes from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, USA, Canada, Surinam, Curacao, Trinidad & Tobago and Aruba also won 12 silver and 14 bronze medals.
Three golds
Seven-year-old Rique-Lee Rosalia-Liu led the team with three gold medals. Two golds were earned in sparring, one in forms and the bronze in break tests.
Two golds
Seven-year-old Shailen James earned two gold medals in sparring. He also took silver in forms and bronze in breaking.
Shekinah Carbon earned a gold medal in sparring and one in breaking. She also took bronze in forms.
Lee-Ann Liu earned gold in forms and breaking.
One gold
Four athletes earned one gold medal. Raj Sooknarine earned a gold and bronze in sparring. Bronze in forms and in breaking. Jhavid Ramcharan earned gold in sparring, a silver in breaking and bronze in forms. Key-mari Richardson took gold in sparring and bronze in sparring, forms and breaking. Sunil Mankaran took gold in forms and silver in both sparring and breaking.
Two silvers
Two silver medals were earned by Rheysa Tjon-Tam-Pau and Shon Sooknarine. Tjon-Tam-Pau earned silver in sparring and breaking and bronze in forms. Sooknarine won silver in forms and breaking and bronze in sparring.
Thasan Khemraj earned silver in sparring and bronze in both forms and breaking.
Two adults competed with the team. Audrey van de Riet won gold in forms, sparring and breaking. Paulien Vuijst earned silver in all three events.
“Once again, we have put St. Maarten on the World taekwondo map,” said a proud Grandmaster Liu.
A total of 419 athletes competed in the international competition filmed by ESPN.
“Our athletes learn a lot from this kind of international exposure.” The grandmaster continued, “our athletes once again made us proud and of course we receive a lot of invitations from several countries and the ESPN organization to participate in other tournaments.”
Making the trip possible were AVIS, Nagico Insurances N.V., Euro Caribbean Linkup N.V., Oriental Caribbean Insurances (OCI), Windward Islands Bank, St. Maarten Shipping N.V., Gulf Insurance, Orange Grove Pharmacy, Canon, Balerina B.V.,Aleke Construction & Maintenance, NAPA and Seven Seas Water.
