For martial arts fans, Breaffy International Sports Arena will be the place to be this weekend for the third annual White Tiger Challenge, taking place over Saturday and Sunday.
In 2012 the White Tiger Challenge attracted so many competitors that the event organisers felt they had no option but to change the event from one day to two days’ duration. “We had in excess of 450 entries across six different competitive disciplines last year,” event co-ordinator Damien Gormley said, adding that “this year we are expecting even more, with competitors travelling from all over Ireland and the UK to take part.”
The standard is going to be very high again this year with the UK team set to include newly selected British Olympic Team member Charlie Maddoch, while the Irish team will include national, international, European, and world champions such as Mark McDermott, Jay Daniels, Dessie Leonard, and Tony Stephenson, also selected to compete in the Olympics in Rio in 2016.
The event registration will open at 1pm on Saturday, with the first day being for the demonstration divisions which will include displays of traditional Japanese, Korean, and Chinese martial arts both with and without weapons. Immediately after will be the freestyle demonstrations of musical forms, musical weapons forms, and tricks displays. Sunday will be all about the competitive fighting with divisions for point fighting, continuous fighting, and the open grand championship running throughout the day.
“There are novice divisions, intermediate divisions, and advanced divisions, non-contact display divisions, contact fighting divisions, and team divisions, if you are a martial artist, there will be something for you this weekend,” Gormley said. “From the youngest child right through to adults this event is open to anyone involved in the martial arts to take part.” Spectators are more than welcome to come along to support the local competitors or simply to enjoy the event. The demonstration divisions are scheduled to start at noon on Saturday while the fighting divisions will begin at 11am on Sunday.
