Karate World Championships, another 4 podiums for Italy: Italy closes with 10 medals. Benetello and Waldensians: “Continuously growing movement”

Italy closed the World Championships in Budapest with an absolutely positive result of ten medals won: 4 silvers and 6 bronzes between kata, kumite and parakarate. Yesterday, on the final day of the world championship, the women’s kata team and Valerio Di Cocco in parakate climbed to the second step of the podium, while the men’s kata and kumite teams placed third.

SILVER

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After her bronze debut in the individual kata Terryana D’Onofrio returned to the central tatami of the Papp Lazlo Budapest Arena to compete in the team kata final. Completing the Italian team are Elena Roversi and Michela Rizzo, former European U21 champions. The brand new team surprised everyone with an extraordinary run in the preliminary phase which culminated with the final then lost against Japan 47.1 to 44.3. The gap absolutely does not do justice to the performance of the Italians who have demonstrated that they have a wide margin for improvement, but that they are more ready than ever for a brilliant future. The other silver medalist was put around his neck by Valerio Di Cocco in the parakate: in the Weelchair Users K30 category the Italian showed excellent performance, narrowly losing to the more experienced Egyptian Abouelnaga 45.1 to 43.5.

BRONZES

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The men’s kata team also featured a new lineup. With Mattia Busato focusing more on the individual path (fifth place obtained on Saturday), the very young Alessio Ghinami, already world junior champion, joined the team. His talent and the great experience of the two “veterans” of the team, Alessandro Iodice and Gianluca Gallo, brought Italy to the third step of the podium, beating France 45.0 to 43.0. A thrilling final instead for the men’s kumite team made up of Avanzini, De Vivo, Fiore, Maresca, Marino, Martina, Minardi and Pietromarchi. The Azzurri, 2021 world champions, gave the public some spectacular matches against Azerbaijan where four matches out of five were enough to close the matter. In the first, Simone Marino won 5-2, with 9 seconds left, in a comeback. In the second Michele Martina lost 7-5, while in the third Andrea Minardi brought the situation back to the front by winning 3-0. The protagonist of the fourth and decisive match was captain Luca Maresca, who finished with a score of 6-3, thus giving Italy a well-deserved bronze medal.

THE BUDGET

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“We are very happy with the performance of the Azzurri – commented the technical director Luca Valdesi -. This was among the most important editions ever in terms of number of participants and we managed to bring 8 boys to play in a medal final both in kata than in kumite. Not to mention the four parakate finals. This means that the movement is growing and that we are working well both as a national team and as a Federation. The results demonstrate it: after very positive European Championships, we managed to confirm the excellent performances also at the World Championships. We knew that the competition was not easy, all the Nations were well prepared as these were the last World Championships with the formula of individual and team competition at the same time. Unfortunately we were not able to conquer the most precious metal, but as I was saying, being able to bring 8 athletes to a medal final is synonymous with our national team traveling at a very high and competitive level.” “These World Championships have reached a very high level not only from a technical point of view, but also from an organizational point of view – continued Fijlkam vice-president of the Karate sector Davide Benetello -. The entire world entourage was amazed. As a representative of the Italian federation I can only be very satisfied with the results and with Italy’s continuous journey towards ever greater goals. In September 2024, Italy will host a world championship for the first time ever, in fact the Youth World Championships will be held in Jesolo, and we will certainly take inspiration for the organization from the competition just concluded in Bulgaria, trying to improve further in many aspects, also given the numbers we expect: accustomed to the Youth League stage that we host every year in the same location, the other Nations know very well the organizational capabilities of the Fijlkam and the local Multisport Veneto committee. Now we just have to get back to work for the foreseeable future, we have a very challenging year ahead of us, but we are absolutely ready to face it.”