Barbosa Will Lead The PH Taekwondo Team
2 min read
Olympic gold medalist Kurt Bryan Barbosa will lead the Philippine team at the World Taekwondo Championships, which will take place in Cancun, Mexico, from November 13 to November 20.
Other competitors on the Kyorugi (sparring) team include Jessica Canabal (women’s minus 54 kilograms), Joseph Chua (men’s minus 63 kilograms), Alfrits Arevalo (men’s minus 68 kilograms), Dave Cea (men’s minus 74 kilograms), and Laila Delo (women’s minus 67 kilograms).
Carlos Padilla and Paul Romero, two of the team’s coaches, will be accompanying the six athletes.
At the 2019 World Championships, which were held in Manchester, United Kingdom, Barbosa, Canabal, and Delo all participated in the competition.
In an interview on Saturday, the 23-year-old Barbosa, who won the UAAP Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards in 2019, said, “I’m not expecting, I will go there and demonstrate who I am in the World Championships.”
In Manchester, he was eliminated in the first round by the Thai competitor Ramnarong Sawekwiharee, who had previously won the bronze medal at the World Championships in 2015 (Russia) and 2017 (South Korea).
Barbosa’s victory in the semifinals of the Asian qualifying event held in Amman, Jordan, allowed him to qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. However, he was eliminated from competition in the round of 16 by world champion Jang Jun of South Korea.
This year, Barbosa has competed in three events, one of which was the Vietnam Southeast Asian Games. There, he won the men’s minus 54-kg category for the second year in a row, earning himself a gold medal.
At the Asian Taekwondo Championships in July, he competed and was eliminated in the quarterfinal round. However, the following week in the Korean Open International Taekwondo Championships he competed in, he managed to earn a bronze medal.
Barbosa gave this response when questioned about his preparation for the competition in Mexico: “Everything is good.” (
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