The Daegu "World Challenge" Track meet was here on Wednesday and a stack of world and Olympic stars showed up. Daegu didn't disappoint and put a LOT of people in the stands for this event. Without a doubt, Usain Bolt was the biggest star. He looked like he barely broke a sweat in winning with a time of 9.84 seconds. Crazy to think that in 1996 that time would have not only won him an Olympic gold, but also broken the world record. These days that's not even in the ballpark when compared to the mind-bending 9.58s that Bolt ran last year. For my money Bolt is one of the best pure athletes living on this planet right now. The funny thing is, I read an interesting article about how if Bolt had grown up in the U.S. he would never had been a 100m/200m runner. The thinking that his height put him at a huge disadvantage in the starting blocks would have pushed him into the 400m and 800m races where the effects of a bad start are a bit less. Interesting stuff. Here's a video of the race I shot on my camera. I wasn't sure if I got it all because the display on the camera bit the dust, so no chirps about the bad angle. At least we had pretty good seats near the finish line.
Crowd Shot. Good turnout.
Missing Gloves and "Battle Pants"
I brought a nice pair of red Twins sparring gloves to Korea with me. A few weeks before we moved the gym they disappeared. I had been leaving them around for some of the other fighters and sparring partners to use in their preparation (there's really only 2 other pairs of gloves you can spar with at the club). The problem is that, like every MMA gym, there's a revolving door of highschool and college kids who come in thinking they're tough and leave after a few weeks of getting their limbs tied in knots and their bottoms spanked like toddlers. At least in Korea they don't show up in TAPOUT and Affliction gear to show how serious they are about MMA. I'm sure one of these wannabes took the gloves. Given the family environment at Daegu MMA I can't imagine any of the regulars touching them. On Monday I was hitting pads with Un Sik and he asked where my gloves were. When he heard what happened he was pissed. He pulled all of the highschool kids to the side as a group and absolutely reamed them out. I'm not sure what he said, but they looked scared. I felt a bit bad because all of the kids that were there are regulars and I'm sure they didn't touch the gloves. I hope he was just mobilizing the troops to find out where the gloves ended up.
Side Note: While I was looking on the net for some replacement gloves that would ship from inside Korea I noticed that Koreans use the term "Battle Pants" instead of "Fight Shorts". I think that sounds way cooler and, effective immediately, I will be referring to all of my shorts as "Battle Pants".
New GYM Location
The new Daegu MMA location is set up ad we've been using it all week. It's a little smaller than the last place but much nicer, a little more open and in a much better location to attract traffic. Being on the fourth floor with no air conditioning makes the new gym a bit of a sweat box. Temperatures are hitting 30 + degrees these days and it's only going to get hotter. When you're training in a gi it's not such a big deal, because the gi soaks up most of the sweat, but no-gi, MMA or kickboxing is a different story. The mats get pretty slick and I've seen a few cases of "bambi legs" already. I'm not looking forward to the temperature in there during the hot and humid monsoon season. I'll post some pics of training at the new place in the next week.
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