For many years Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia have been at the top level for taekwondo on the African continent. However, recently at the 10th Senior Taekwondo Championship, which took place in Tripoli from the 21st to 24th November where 105 athletes representing 18 countries competed, the Libyan male athletes managed to gain more gold, silver and bronze medals than any other country and won the first place cup; Morocco came in second place and Egypt third. In the female competition, Morocco
took first with Egypt second and Tunisia in third place.

“This victory came as a result of the vision and support of several organisations and people led by Dr. Mohamed El Qaddafi,Chairman of the Libyan Olympic Committee. He encouraged the various sports federations to host world and regional events,” Eng. Nabil Al Aalem, Executive Director of the Libyan Olympic Committee explained.
Eng. Al Aalem was keen to attend most days to watch and support, especially as he is a former judo champion and coach and has tremendous spirit and enthusiasm for martial arts.

“It was a challenge to organise such an important and big event at short notice, as it had originally been planned to hold the event in Senegal, however, just two weeks before the date of the event the The Opening Ceremony show by a Moroccan team Senegalese were not yet ready so Libya signed on to take over the responsibility. We did not sleep for days to make sure that the championship would take place as it should and to prove that Libya is capable of successfully hosting such an event,” Mohamed Bendak the President of the Libyan Taekwondo Federation commented.

The Egyptians were close to the team who helped Libya to achieve success. General Ahmed Foli, President of the African Taekwondo Federation and Vice President of the World Taekwondo Federation said; “We were very confident that our brothers in Libya, with the support of their government, would be able to host the event and do a good job because they had proven it before in 2007 when Libya hosted the African Olympic qualification. I personally kept in daily communication with Bendak to make sure that everything would be well planned and organised” The World Taekwondo Federation is keeping a good eye on Africa and always supports the African Union. At this event Philippe Bouedo, the Chairman of the Games Committee at the World Taekwondo Federation was there too and who helped a lot and supervised the event as well as Dreis El Hilaly, a board member of the World Taekwondo Federation Executive Council which added value to the event.

Eng. Hosam Morsy, President of the Egyptian Taekwondo Federation and General Secretary of the African Taekwondo Union says;”We consider hosting such an important event in Libya just as if it is in Egypt. We are one team and we must support and help to make it a successful event and we see it as our responsibility”
More evidence of the Egyptian touch in this championship was the fact that the Egyptian former taekwondo world champion Talaat Mabrok took on the responsibility of coaching the Libyan national team.
At the end of the championship, Mabrok received the best coach award as his achievements were obvious to everyone. Another Egyptian who contributed a lot to this event’s success was Mohamed Ali Abou Zaied, the Egyptian business man and former
taekwondo coach who emigrated to Libya years ago and who sponsored the championship and enabled the Libyans to end up with a well hosted and organised event.

Among the positive results of the event was former Egyptian Athens Olympic champion Tamer Salah’s winning of the gold medal which proved that he could still give his all and win. On the 25th and 26th of November the second African Junior Taekwondo Championship was held with 80 athletes representing 15 countries participating. Egypt took first place position in both
the male and female competitions confirming that the infrastructure and future of taekwondo is still strong in the Pharaoh’s land. Tunisia and Cote D’Iviore came in second and third place respectively in the male division while Morocco and Tunisia took
the second and third place in the female junior competition.

Amr Selim, Chairman of the African Union Technical Committee, said “ The level of the competitors is definitely improving and it has become clear that most of the African sports governmental bodies are paying more attention to their taekwondo national teams especially since it became an Olympic sport and opens doors for Africa to enter the history of sport by winning in taekwondo Olympic competitions.”