Not even heavy snowfall and treacherous road conditions could stop 7 of our best Camberley warriors. They bravely battled the horrible weather to arrive in Sheffield ready to then battle with other top fighters in the country at the British Trials.
Lasha was our only junior this time around and he had a very busy day. He got off on the right foot bagging two wins only to lose to William Johnson in an unlucky refereeing decision. In a groundhog like day he picked himself up and again notched up another 2 wins only to be defeated again by the same fighter in the bronze medal contest. Lasha had to accept 5th place this time and hope to unleash some of the disappointment on the senior the following day.
Kicking off the action on Sunday was Ashley McKenzie, our lightest fighter of the day. New to the CJC Elite team but certainly not new to the pressure and expectation upon him, Ashley confidently won all 5 of his fights by the maximum 10 points stamping his authority on the weight and claiming the gold medal.
In the under 66kg we had 2 fighters chomping at the bit, there were high expectations on the more experienced fighter Nathon Burns. Aaron Turner the younger of the 2 fighters was also hoping to cause some upsets in the weight. Both of our fighters ended up in the larger pool together, Nathon clocked 4 wins out of 5 putting him through in second place, whereas Aaron managed 3 wins out of 5 which wasn’t quite enough for him to progress into the next round this time but gave him a fifth place. In the final pool Nathon carried one loss through leaving him to fight Olympian Colin Oates and a young Scottish fighter. Despite his best efforts and throwing Colin for a huge 7 point score he narrowly lost that contest but got the job done against the young scot who became the eventual winner beating both Colin Oates and Lewis Keeble.
Starting his second day of action in under 73kg was Lasha Lekishvili, he joined club mate and Olympian Danny Williams. Lasha fought well and secured 2 out of 4 wins so didn’t make it to the second round finishing with fifth. Hoping to go one better than this was Danny, in a complicated scenario where 3 fighters in his pool all won 3 fights each it went down to scores. Unfortunately Williams was just 2 points short and had a disappointingly early finish to the day, also in fifth place.
Next up in under 81kg was Tom Davis, he won all 3 fights in his first round pool to progress into the final pool. This was when things got serious, he won his first two fights and then had an epic battle against Bath rival Tom Reed, after 8 minutes of explosive fighting Reed conceded a small penalty giving Davis the win and the gold medal.
The biggest of our Camberley warriors was Frazer Chamberlain in under 90kg, he had a tough day and although he fought well winning 2 out of 5 fights it wasn’t enough for a medal this year.
