ITF taekwondo future

Team Taekwon-do – finaly ITF Taekwon-do sport November 25, 2012

International Team Taekwon-do Federation was presented some time ago through their facebook page and already gained a lot of attention worldwide. As a unification sport project this federation might be on a good way to change the history of ITF Taekwon-do as a sport. A posts that can be find on mentioned facebook page clearly defined Team Taekwon-do Federation as a sport organization not interested in certification or graduation program. This actually puts this organization in a position to become strong sport organization recognized by different international sport bodies such as IOC or SportAccord.

As ITTF does not make any difference of original affiliation of their future sportsmen I believe that this is an excellent unification project for different ITF groups. ITTF will just promote one sport aspect of Taekwon-do which is probably the most attractive one – team sparring. And the package is great as well. No traditional protocols through the match will ensure much more dynamic events and cumulative scoring system will keep the match score unpredictable until the end of the match. It can easily be understood that creators of this competition system took care about possible televising of this sport as it’s format is great for future TV shows.

The funny thing about this is that last year WTF promoted similar system through the match between Russia and Korea. It is actualy copy/pasted system and as usually WTF will try to make this system as their invention. But they will have to admit that Eastern Europe lounched this 4 years ago as an international competition system called Regional Taekwon-do League with several countries involved. Later on system was promoted as possible profesional sport event  called Power Taekwon-do with full contact allowed. Both amateur and professional aspects are covered from behalf of creators of Team Taekwon-do but this did not make any influence on WTF team to copy this system. It is actually sad that WTF is acting like this but this shows their weakness as well. In the mean time they moved ahead and at the moment WTF is promoting World Clubs Cup.

Anyhow, ITTF will probably keep on trying to find their place on Earth and it will only depend on ITF people to take this chance and climbe on a higher level of  ITF Taekwon-do unified in one sport discipline – Team Taekwon-do,  while keeping their identity through usual competition and of course graduation/certification programs.