Karate – Freund represents Australia at world cup

YONATAN Freund emerged from last week’s 2024 Karate World Cup in Pamplona, Spain, with a sense of confidence and belief, having recorded two wins and two losses when representing Australia against the world’s best. The 22-year-old – who runs a karate school in Sydney’s east with close friend and training partner Richard Basckin – made his senior world championships debut last year in Budapest and this tournament in Spain was his first world cup appearance. “My approach was fairly similar to last year’s [world championships] – six days a week of training – and I’m very lucky to have a great coach and team behind me,” Freund told The AJN on Monday. “This event was a new experience, because only the top 20 countries were here, so there were no easy rounds and at this level you can’t afford to make many mistakes. “But fighting the best in the world was a great experience and I’ll take a lot of confidence moving forward from this.” While Freund lost a close battle against a North Macedonian and was convincingly defeated by a Croatian who is the European champion, he finished the tournament strongly with wins against opponents from Iran and Italy. He had to dig deep against the Italian, having copped a painful blow to his leg early on and then trailed by one point on two occasions, before getting on top of the bout by executing point-scoring blows to prevail 3-2. “Individually I had some good and bad moments – I won my fights against Iran and Italy, which I was happy with,” Freund said. “The Iranian is a former world champion, so that win was my proudest moment, especially with everything that’s going on in the world.” The Australian men’s kumite karate team showed potential and earned several wins, but ultimately fell short of advancing past the group stage. The men’s kumite world cup title was won for the first time by Egypt, who defeated Iran 3-0 in the final, while Japan claimed bronze after beating Italy. “As a team, it was a disappointing event for Australia,” Freund said. “We had a lot of close fights, but weren’t able to close out a lot of those fights and didn’t get the amount of wins we were hoping for Being from Australia means we don’t get as many opportunities to fight against the best in the world because of the distance, so for a lot of us, it was our first time fighting internationally this year and that makes it hard. “But everyone fought hard and left everything out there and I’m proud of the team for that. “We’ll come back stronger,” Freund said.