Benidorm, Friday 2 October 2026
Day 4 of the 10th ITF Taekwon-Do World Cup decided 28 more categories. The morning belonged to the Junior Pattern finals in Ring 1, two of them with 125 competitors each, and the afternoon brought the Adult Male Dan sparring finals, followed in the evening by the Final Gala and the World Record Event.
A double for Sean O’Neil
Sean O’Neil of Performance Taekwon-Do (Canada) was the athlete of the day. He won the Adult Male Pattern 4th–6th Dan final, the category whose pools had been held on Thursday, and then took gold in Dan Sparring 69–75 kg as well.
Junior Pattern finals
The two biggest categories of the day went to Sixten Hultbäck of Frölunda TKD in Junior Male 1st Dan Pattern and to Jazmin Racca Samaniego of Bordiez Marcelo in Junior Female 1st Dan Pattern. Oliver Molnar of Londinium Fighters Association won Junior Male 2nd Dan Pattern, and Nina Ross of the ITF New Zealand won Junior Female 2nd Dan Pattern. The club Bordiez Marcelo also finished first and second in Junior Female 3rd Dan, with Geraldine Gorosito ahead of Milagros Riedel.
Adult sparring
Asoc. Española TKD-ITF from Spain won two of the adult men’s Dan sparring titles, through Kabil Bahaa Talhaoui at 57–63 kg and Houssame Hatifi Leghraoui over 87 kg. Ireland also collected two: Finn Martin of ITA Ireland 4 won the adult sparring category up to 57 kg and James Tuite of the Irish Taekwon-Do Association won 63–69 kg. Pablo Kaufmann of GM Gomez de Olivera took 75–81 kg, David Stige of Bergen TKD won 81–87 kg, and Diana Manzhos of the Taekwon-Do ITF Israeli Center won Female 50–55 kg.
Special Technique and pre-arranged events
Grace Conway of Braveheart Martial Arts won Pre-Junior Female Special Technique after three rounds of tie-breaks, her second gold of the week after Thursday’s sparring title. In the team events, the team of the club “GM Gomez de Olivera” won Pre-Junior Pre-Arranged Sparring, and FATI’s Andrés Giz and Lucía Fusco took Senior Pre-Arranged Sparring, and Røyken TKD’s Ingvild Landmark and Kai Saxrud won the Veteran PRe-Arranged Sparring groups.
Final Gala and World Record Event
With a little delay, after most of the scheduled competition was over, the World Cup Gala 2026 started. A spectacular event with not only the full ITF Board of Directors attending but also many other ITF dignitaries and WT representatives. The emotional highlights included the selected sparring and pattern finals and the World Record Event – with a new World Record in Twimyo Nopi Ap Cha Busigi by Andrei Chiriac from Romania at a height of 292cm, just 1 cm more than his World Record from last year.
The full report of the Gala is available here.
Day 4 in numbers
- Categories decided: 28.
- Most successful clubs of the day: Asoc. Española TKD-ITF, Bordiez Marcelo, GM Gomez de Olivera and Performance Taekwon-Do, with two golds each.
- Biggest categories: Junior Male and Female 1st Dan Pattern, with 125 competitors each.
- After four days: 188 categories decided and 723 medals awarded to 45 countries and 179 clubs.
Tomorrow: Saturday is the final day of the World Cup, with competition in all eleven rings from 09:00, mostly sparring finals across the pre-junior (12–14 years), junior (15–17 years) and adult (18–35 years) age groups. Every ring is streamed live, and the links are in our morning post.
Full results: sportdata.org – 10th ITF Taekwon-Do World Cup 2026
Preview World Cup Day 5: Team Day and the Closing Ceremony
