“Taekwondo will shine in the European Games”

The Deputy Secretary General of the European Taekwondo Union Kenneth Schunken moved to Baku, Azerbaijan to begin preparations for the first edition of the European Games. Less than a week before the kick off, the Taekwondo organizing committee is ready to receive all the athlete who will experience the greatest continental multisport festival.

“Almost all year I worked with Leyla Rzayeva, she is a local colleague recommended by the Federation to work with me. As to leave a legacy, I have trained Leyla all year to be ready to work as a competition manager at next Games in Baku, the Islamic Games. Only a few weeks ago we got reinforcements from extra staff” said Shunken exclusively to MasTK.

“Now, six days before the Opening ceremony, my staff consists of eight people and next week we will have three international Russian volunteers joining our team. We met them during the ETU European Champ. Olympic weight categories. We invited them to help us at Games time.”

“All the athletes who will participate in this event, will get a high level competition. They will be fighting in the most iconic venue of the Games, Crystal Hall. The venue is real intimate, the crowd can almost touch the athletes as we have tried to create an arena. In total 1500 spectators can be welcomed in the venue” said Shunken.

Daedo will provide the Protector Scoring System, including the headgears and the video replay system for this competition. A total of 40 referees were selected for this tournament and Philippe Bouedo will act as Technical Delegate and Chakir Chelbat as Referee Director to ensure this event is carried out flawlessly.

“I am very proud that WTF is sending the WTF demo team. We are the only sport at the Games that has a demo team coming over and that is giving demos during our event. It will be a great promotion of our sport and will excite the people lf Azerbaijan” continued Shunken during the interview with MasTKD.

A total of 127 competitors will gather in the first continental multisport event and the President of the World Taekwondo Federation, Dr. Choue Chungwon, as well as Mr. Sakis Pragalos, President of the European Taekwondo Union will be present at this event.

“We have already carried out the test event. We simulated all operations and the Technical Delegate Philippe Bouedo and Referee Chairman Chakir Chelbat were present and we got some valuable feedback to further improve our operations.With the new local World Champion, Radik Isaev, we all hope that host Azerbaijan will be able to win a gold medal.”

To finalize the interview Shunken thanked MasTKD for promoting this important event to Europe.