Board logo

Savate Kickboxing Championships- wish us luck!
James - 28/9/05 at 05:42 PM

As some of you know I'm rather keen on Savate kickboxing.

Tomorrow a team of 8 of us go to Paris to represent Great Britain in the 2005 European Savate Championships.

Quite a big team as we have to send 3 officials (referees/judges) as well. Along with corner men, general hangers-on and a couple of girlfriends for good measure.

All nervous as hell but looking forward to it!

Wish us luck please!


Cheers,
James


For the very bored: a History of Savate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savate

[Edited on 28/9/05 by James]

I love speed :-P - 28/9/05 at 05:44 PM

Good Luck

Surrey Dave - 28/9/05 at 05:47 PM

Have fun , dont make the maltese cross!

Peteff - 28/9/05 at 06:10 PM

Sounds like a good hobby, best of luck James. edit:- A brief history of savate. A martial art originally based on fighting with savaloy sausages in a karate stylee, henceforth shortened to savate.

[Edited on 28/9/05 by Peteff]

JoelP - 28/9/05 at 06:10 PM

good luck james!

is it televised?!

steve_gus - 28/9/05 at 06:36 PM

best of luck



Newcastle managed with just the one girlfriend (allegedly) so the second is a spare?

:

atb

steve

andylancaster3000 - 28/9/05 at 06:39 PM

Good luck james...won't be at Newlands then?!

splitrivet - 28/9/05 at 06:52 PM

best of luck James,knock yourself out.......errrrr on second thoughts, better not.
Cheers,
Bob

CairB - 28/9/05 at 07:06 PM

James,

Hope all goes well for you and the team and nobody takes "le Pisseux"


Cheers,

Colin

mookaloid - 28/9/05 at 07:08 PM

good luck as requested

Cheers

Mark

mangogrooveworkshop - 28/9/05 at 08:19 PM

Mrs Mangogroove wishes you luck, and to kick some froggie ass, preferably on their chicken legs. from the karate kid........

Messenjah - 28/9/05 at 08:30 PM

well not quite the same sport but always remember "wax on wax off"

hehe

good luck dude

Noodle - 28/9/05 at 08:33 PM

Kick first, ask questions later.

Avoneer - 28/9/05 at 09:09 PM

Good luck.

I had two kickboxing fights in my youth.

Won the first on points and was KO'd before I hit the floor in the 2nd.

All good fun though.

Pat

MikeR - 28/9/05 at 09:18 PM

good luck, break a leg ...... preferably someone elses (accidentally of course)


(must remember to use capitals for smiley's)

[Edited on 28/9/05 by MikeR]

ned - 29/9/05 at 10:41 AM

good luck jimbob, knock em dead (well, not actually proper dead, but you know what i mean )

James - 4/10/05 at 03:10 PM

Thanks for all the Good lucks everyone!

Guess they helped as we all (Team GB) did pretty well.

My girlfriend got Bronze (which seeing as she's got two different stomach bugs she picked up on a trip to Honduras and couldn't train in the two weeks leading up to the comp' is pretty impressive!).
We also got a couple of 4th places.

I came 5th, unfortunately going out in the qtr. final as a result of meeting a French opponent at that stage. Being a French sport they are the best- fighting them is like meeting Brazil in World Cup Football!
My French opponent beat me and went on to be World champion last year and he went on to be European champion at this comp.

Although a little dissapointed about only coming 5th I'm still pretty chuffed about how well I did against the French guy. He trains 5/6 days a week with the best (full-time) instructors in the world and he's amazing. Still though, I *nearly* beat him. One of the three judges actually gave the fight to me so guess it must have been pretty close!

Also, because the French are the best everyone wants them to lose and supports the underdog. Meaning I had most of the audience of other teams (about 200/300 people) cheering for me. They even booed when he was awarded the win! It feels pretty good when people from all over Europe come up to you and shake your hand and say you should have won!

And just to make me feel even more big-headed:
In the restaurant afterwards I ran into my French opponent. He told me I had been his hardest fight of the weekend! Yay!
Sorry... I'll shutup now!



Anyway, thanks again for the good luck!

Cheers,
James

[Edited on 4/10/05 by James]

907 - 4/10/05 at 03:19 PM

If you were beaten by the bloke who won it....

Think of it as coming second.

Well done James


Paul G

MikeR - 4/10/05 at 04:41 PM

or ........... don't mess with james, he kicks ass for fun!

(and definately don't mess with his misses ............)

Messenjah - 4/10/05 at 05:11 PM

hehe so if you came fith and your girlfriend came 3rd does that mean she would kick your ass or do men and women fight seperately

JoelP - 4/10/05 at 05:56 PM

nice one james, thats what i call a great result!

ned - 4/10/05 at 06:01 PM

yup Rachael would defo kick James sorry ass lol

Rorty - 5/10/05 at 06:00 AM

Well done James. I'm sure if you had trained half as much as he did then you would have beaten him.

James - 5/10/05 at 08:11 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Messenjah
hehe so if you came fith and your girlfriend came 3rd does that mean she would kick your ass or do men and women fight seperately


Strangely enough we fight separately!

There are 6 weight categories each too. So I only fight people 70-76KGs.

My girlfriend and I met at the class which is quite good as bringing someone along with you once you've been doing it awhile doesn't seem to work judging by other couples there.
We used to enjoy sparring together and reckoned that that was why we didn't have an argument for the first 18mths we went out!
Then, as we both got better it became less of a good idea- we're both rather competitive so someone (usually her) used to get hurt! Now, although we train together we don't spar- it only cause problems!


World champs is September next year- need to finish building the car so so I can get back to the hard training!

I'm going to the main class tonight but that's all I'm doing this week as I want a bit of a break. I'm also guilt free eating cakes!
Then Sunday it'll be back to the training.

Speaking to the French guy afterwards he was saying that to keep your place on the French team you have to do 5x600m laps of a track in 2 minutes each with just a minute break between each lap. Apparently 600m in 2 minutes is equivalent exercise on the heart as a 2minute round!



Cheers,
James

[Edited on 5/10/05 by James]