Ja Combined team all set for US Open

Jamaica’s combined martial arts team members are fine-tuning training ahead of the 2019 US Open International Sports Karate Association World Martial Arts Championships, starting July 3 in Orlando, Florida.

Ackeem Lawrence leads Jamaica’s 12-man squad, which includes US Open veterans such as Olympian Kenneth Edwards and Nicholas Dusard, making them favourites to dominate the black belt continuous-sparring division, though facing strong opposition from perennial rivals Argentina and New Zealand.

However, the depth of Jamaica’s squad, completed by Adrian Moore, Richard Stone, Akino Lindsay, Trevor Webb Jr, Rasean Martin, Oral Rumble, and Richard Touzlain, as well as two invitees, Nicholai Reid and Donald Francis, should see the combined team members winning their respective weight divisions, possibly facing each other in continuous-sparring finals.

The world’s biggest martial arts open tournament, with hundreds of competitors, the US Open will feature a new taekwon do division, the International Taekwondo Association US Open Challenge Championships (International Taekwondo Federation rules), set for July 4, organised by Team Jamaica and open to all fighters at the Open.

Jamaica, which hosted the 2014 ITF World Cup at the Montego Bay Convention Centre and won 17 gold medals, including the marquee senior male team-sparring event, are specialists in the discipline and should be the toast of the new division.

Last year, Dusard and Lawrence won bronze medals at the World Cup in Sydney, Australia, Jamaica’s best-ever showing at an ITF world tournament on foreign soil.