Silvermedal winner Phillip Le with his coach Danny Kordanovski at the world championships. 72484 Picture: CONTRIBUTED
By Liam Twomey
Australian Taekwondo has a new star and his name is Phillip Le.
The 18-year-old returned from the ITF World Taekwondo Championships in North Korea sporting a silver medal after an outstanding performance in the sparring event.
Le’s club coach and national head coach Danny Kordanovski said it was a great result after competing in a country that is taekwondo driven.
“The whole country runs on this sport. Imagine the AFL in Victoria and that is pretty much what the Taekwondo ITF is like in the whole of North Korea. They stop the streets, athletes are in convoy with police escorts, there is no traffic on the roads,” Kordanovski said.
“It’s phenomenal to think a sporting organisation can have this much power.”
Le took to the arena for the sparring event and made his way through the initial rounds with confidence and ease until he was forced to fight a former world champion and one of the favourites for the gold medal in the semi-final.
Kordanovski described the match as a fairytale performance.
“For the first time ever they actually had the scores up which meant you could play more strategically. We were down and I was calling out to Phil, we’re down we’re out if you don’t do this now,” he said.
“He did a double side back and jumped to the side and threw a punch and it landed. The look on the other coach’s face, he couldn’t believe it. For Phil to beat him and literally beat him in the last moments was almost a fairytale.”
The Sunshine North resident returned to fight in the gold medal match where he was defeated in an enthralling final.
“The final was brilliant and Phil did his best. He still looked calm and I think that is the difference between Phil and every other competitor from the Western countries.”
“Phillip’s timing is impeccable, his ring craft is impeccable. Heads held high we did go down but we didn’t go down by a lot. You can’t take anything away from his opponent.”
Kordanovski is also the head coach at The International Taekwondo Defence Force where Le, and a number of other competitors from the Australian team train.
Four participants from his centre including Le and Nhan Hoang, John Flores and Phillip Chien came fourth in the self-defense category.
“It’s our little club in Melbourne’s West, that’s all it is and we took a top four placing, it’s outstanding, it’s very special.”
