Toronto:World Wushu Championships

I have not been to a world Wushu competition since the first one............I was the US Team Coach at the !st Worlds in Beijing.  Since that time wushu has changed a lot.  10 years ago the US was still a superpower dominating the world economy and the US was still one of the best countries in wushu..........................now the rest of the world has surpassed the US in wushu and the world economy is in bad shape.  Times are a changing....!!  This year though the US picked a much more balanced team..not everyone was from one region or school......actually worked to find the best athletes.  A good measure of thanks should be given to Sifu Li Xu Dong....who did a Herculean job in trying to make the team selection process as fair as possible.

Since, I had never been to Toronto ...I decided to combine a little tourism with a n opportunity to support the US Team and attend the worlds.  The Canadian Team did a bang up job to put on the Worlds.

The Delta Chelsea was the official tournament hotel.

A four star hotel...with spacious rooms and lots of food courts.

Wushu Posters like this were at the airport and hotel lobby,

The Delta Chelsea was not too far from downtown Toronto. If you look closely you'll see the Adidas Store.........where I ran into Shahaub and Collin.  Every Wushu guy or gal has got to have the latest Adidas gear!!

Eaton square reminded me of time Square in New York City....plenty of high end shops and businesses.

Entrance from Eaton Square into the subway made travelling quick and easy.  Simu and I got there a day earlier so we could walk around explore and find places to eat!  Toronto I must say does have great places to eat...all kinds of food.  Though the best places are outside of this area in the malls.  We did find that the subway often had food malls...so we had breakfast at Horton's in the subway.

The rest of our  SF Team arrived on saturday.  On sunday we took two cabs down to the Ricoh Center for the Opening ceremony.  We found it to be somewhat a problem that no transportation was provided for supporters who came to see  the competition site..........didn't expect anyone from outside of Canada to attend the event?.......the cab ride was not cheap.  We then tried to buy tickets.......that took also sooo long.

The SF Team Delegation:  Ben, Me, Marian, Cass,and Aya.  You can view some of the competition on Youtube...as Cass did lot of phtographing and videoing.

The Opening ceremony began with a performance by rhythmic gymnasts.

Some pretty good flexibility!

Ukrainian dancers were part of a ensemble of dancers representing the diverse ethnic population of Canada.

Then finally the March of the Athletes.......China's Team was led by Wudi. Hong Kong's team, led by Coach Yu Li Kuang and Gao song.

Team Japan being led in by the Canadian Boy scouts.

Approximately 83 countries and about 1,000 athletes in attendance.

And finally, the US Wushu Team!

After the Canadian National anthem....the athletes left so there could be speeches....way too many, and way too long.  More on that next time.  I am gonna take a break, catch ya all later!

Session data
Session data