Karate: Coope shines with three bronze medals

Three members of the Simon Coope Karate Club in Leicestershire represented the winning England team at the WIKF Championships in Cyprus.

Darren McGurk, Lucy Whitfield and Simon Coope's son, David, were part of the England team for a tournament regarded as one of the biggest single-style events in the world.

David was the only member of the England team to compete in all three events and he helped them to win three bronze medals.

Simon said: "David has been excellent. He has been training with nine-time world champion Wayne Otto and has made it into the Olympic team in 2012.

"They were all brilliant. I am over the moon with all three of them. It's a very nerve-racking event, especially for Darren who had never competed at this level.

"They have been training really hard for months and I couldn't ask for any more from them."

In the fighting disciplines, David made it to the third round with solid wins against Norwegian Asmund Slettevold (8-2) and Cypriot Christos Georgeou (9-1), before losing to Anthony Decaigny of Belgium (9-2).

Despite this loss, David managed to take a bronze medal after rejoining in the repechage.

In the team event, David was placed in reserve after suffering a suspected broken toe in action. However he was called into action almost immediately when Jerome Brown suffered a major setback, breaking a wrist after just 13 seconds.

David was first to compete against the Cypriot B team and, despite his injury and the huge weight of expectation on his shoulders, he won 4-2.

McGurk stepped up to the occasion in style, progressing to the kata final where a well executed niseishi gave him scores of 7.7, 8.0 and 7.9.

That was good enough to see McGurk take an impressive seventh place in his first appearance at such a high-profile event.

In the same event, David competed with current Swedish kata champion Gabriel Ingemansson in a second place play-off. He lost by one point but claimed another bronze medal.

Whitfield made it through to the final and claimed sixth place after performing a successful pinnan godan, a fantastic result after she slipped in the first round and qualified for the final in last place.