Bohol's Roving Eye: Bohol's OJ De Los Santos Strikes Gold

OJ De Los Santos, son of Boholana diva Eva Gulle De Los Santos & American David De Los Santos is now a certified world- class karatedo with a gold medal victory at the recent World Shoto Cup Karate Championships held in Cebu City. Here's the full story:

CEBU CITY – National team member OJ delos Santos came through with a riveting, inspired performance to bag the men’s kata gold in thrilling fashion at the close of the 2nd ISKF World Shoto Cup Karate Championships at the Waterfront Hotel grand ballroom here on Sunday.

Performing in front of a hometown crowd, Delos Santos displayed superb poise, power and precision in doing the difficult “hands-in-the-clouds” routine in impressing all seven foreign judges, who gave him the best score of 42.3 points.

with very proud mom, Eva Gulle- Santos of Jagna, Bohol

The 22-year-old from De La Salle University narrowly beat two Filipino-Americans, Michael Cornel and Jumbo Banaria, who represented the United States and both tallied the same 42 points in the event sponsored by SMART, Unilever and Gatorade.

A former Pan American junior champion, Cornel, whose father, Joey, is also a Cebuano native, bagged the silver for having the higher average scores while Banaria, the defending champion, took the bronze medal.

“I’m overwhelmed and near-speechless right now because this is my best finish in an international competition. I really chose one of the most difficult katas and all the hard work paid off,” said Delos Santos, who won a kata bronze medal and team kumite silver in last year’s Indonesia Southeast Asian Games.

“I would also thank to thank my parents for their support and national coach David Lay, who helped me refine my moves,” he added. “Without them this victory would not be possible.”

“OJ’s win was icing on the cake,” said a beaming Lay, the International Shotokan Karate Federation country director for the Philippines, whose organization of the two-day tournament had drawn praises from all the athletes and officials from 15 countries that took part in the event.

The Filipino bets dominated the junior action last Saturday with a bumper crop harvest of 16 gold, 14 silver and eight silver medals.

Indeed, Delos Santos’ triumph capped another productive day for the hosts, who also took a gold in the men’s senior team kata and two silvers in the men’s senior individual kata and team kumite.

ISKF-Philippines president Benjamin Villamayor, Barry Orenciana and Roehl Parungao, all either in their late 40s or early 50s, showed they still had the right moves in besting the US squad for the gold, while Parungao finished a close second behind American Paul McKeena, who also took the senior kumite title.

Philippine Karatedo Federation president Joey Romasanta, who flew here early Sunday just to witness the last day of the competition before heading back to Manila the same night, cited the efforts of Lay and PKF secretary general Raymund Reyes for putting together a memorable competition.

Cebu Waterfront is this year's venue

“The staging of the 2nd ISKF World Shoto Cup here showed again the organizational savvy of Filipinos. I would also like to congratulate OJ for his impressive victory,” Romasanta said. “We can use his win to inspire his teammates to do well in next year’s Myanmar Southeast Asian Games.”

Americans Pedram Rastegar and Yoko Ishida captured the men’s individual kumite and women’s individual kata titles, respectively, while Canada’s Carol Haddad secured the women’s individual kumite gold.

Australia swept the men’s team kumite and women’s team kata titles while the US and Canada captured the men’s team kata and women’s team kumite championships, respectively.

The third edition of the ISKF World Shoto Cup will be held in 2016 in South Africa.

- reprinted from http://www.interaksyon.com

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