Successful CENTURY Athletes at WAKO and WKF Highlights in January 2024

Athens, Paris and Watford were the cities of our athletes' martial arts events from January 26-28. The traditional Athens Challenge took place in the Greek capital. The Wako competition is an absolute highlight on the annual tournament calendar. With 2,400 registrations from 130 clubs from 20 countries, great martial arts was guaranteed for the weekend.

On Friday, forms, pointfighting team fighting and pointfighting grand champion were on the program. On Saturday there was kick light, light contact and wrestling. The event concluded on Sunday with pointfighting, full contact, K1 and Lowkick.

Carvin Burke and Jack Buckley from Team CENTURY took part. On Friday, they competed in the team competition with US stars Bailey Murphy and Devon Hopper in a men's mixed team. In the final of the team competition, they had to compete against the famous Kiraly team and triumphed. Gold for the CENTURY Europe team! What an outstanding success!

In the individual competition, Carvin Burke took second place in the -74 kg category. Jack Buckley took 3rd place in the -74 kg category and 1st place in the -79 kg category.

On the same weekend in England, our athlete Evelyn Neyens competed at the Watford Open. She once again proved her great form, winning the class up to 60 kg and also taking home the gold medal in the Grand Champion Event.

The Karate 1 Premier League in Paris was then the prelude to the next world championship "Road to Cairo 2025". In the new qualification system, each Premier League is important in order to collect points for the World Championships. There are only 32 places in total and only the continental champions are seeded. Mia Bitsch (-55 kg), Stefanos Xenos (-60 kg) and Florian Haas (-60 kg) took part in the competitions in Paris. Things did not go well for Florian Haas on Friday and he was unable to assert himself. Stefanos Xenos, however, won his pool and advanced to the quarter-finals. He lost there, but made it to the consolation round and won the fight for third place against France.

The weekend could not have gone better for Mia Bitsch. She successfully fought her way into the final with 23:8 match points. In only her second Premier League, she was unfortunately unable to win the fight for first place, but showed an absolute world-class performance. Her brother and coach Noah Bitsch was thrilled and proud of her performance. Mia has thus gained a few points and slipped into the top 10 in the world rankings!