Jamaica Stone Ireland with gold

JAMAICA’s Richard Stone made history on Friday evening at the Neptune Stadium in Cork City, Ireland, completing back-to-back and a third double-gold performance at an International Sports Kickboxing Association’s (ISKA) Amateur Members Association World Championships.

Stone, a double gold medallist, points and continuous sparring, in Germany 2015, and at last year’s championships in Montego Bay, Jamaica, defended his heavyweight titles by adding continuous sparring gold to points sparring, which he had won on Thursday.

Team captain Ackeem Lawrence won his first gold and Jamaica’s fourth as the combined martial arts team members rounded out points sparring with Nicholas Dusard’s silver. Lawrence got past Poland’s Rafal Pawlowski for an easy semi-final win before a close victory against Ukraine’s Vladyslav Biehun handed him gold.

Dussard had convincingly won his semis but was unable to get past Ireland’s Jake Riddell, who went on to win the division against Volodymyr Semikinr, who the Jamaican had beaten on Thursday to take points-sparring gold.

Stone’s double, which he completed by utilising his signature side kick to overwhelm the offensive tactics of Ukraine’s Dmytro Rylskyi, pushed him past fellow Jamaican Akino Lindsay, who has won five individual ISKA gold medals.

Having dominated the individual continuous and point-fighting divisions with four gold medals won by three fighters, Jamaica, the smallest contingent at the championships, were yesterday evening preparing to defend their team title won at home last year.

Jamaica hosted the championships at the Montego Bay Convention Centre last year and topped honours in the continuous and point divisions, racking up 118 medals – 27 gold, 35 silver, and 56 bronze – bettered only by England’s 126, and finishing third, in terms of quality, behind the United States.