As SAC echoed with the screams of taekwondo fighters dodging, weaving, and parrying before unleashing their fearsome spinning hooks, one couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe. This fest, Team BITS didn’t sweep the medal tally as they’ve made a habit of, doing but clinched a solitary gold and three silvers in the men’s division, and a gold and two silvers in the women’s division. Their exhausted faces at the end of the day however told a different story – these sportsmen gave it their all.

Taekwondo, as practised during BOSM, adheres to WT (World Taekwondo) rules, based off a system developed in the late 1940s combining elements of Chinese martial art and Karate. Taekwondo’s earliest practitioners, foremost among them Choi Hong Hi, interestingly based their techniques on an understanding of Newton’s Laws and biomechanics, observing, for instance, that the power of a strike increased quadratically with speed but linearly with mass – as a consequence later emphasizing techniques on speed. Other innovations introduced in Choi’s seminal Theory of Power were discarded in World Taekwondo rules for political reasons. In time, South Korean Kukkiwon-style Taekwondo came to dominate, and modern World Taekwondo rules evolved from its precepts.

As the tournament goes, participants are decked in torso and head gear, with all of their attacks targeting these two spots, a kick to the torso earning two points and to the head, three. In addition, a number of kinds of penalties exist – for circling the opponent, below the belt attacks, verbal sparring, for losing one’s balance, or for the use of hands to grapple or fists. As every match takes place in roughly 10 minutes over three rounds, it takes incredible stamina to sustain the explosive movement characteristic of the sport. Thus, it is in the later rounds that fights are won or lost, when the taekwondokas are too tired to stick to their strategy or to even parry attacks.

While a number of fights were conducted over the morning, especially memorable was the fight between Mukul from BITS and Punit Khisher of the Navbharat academy, represented here for the first time. Both fighters, of the U63 kg weight class, were of the same height granting neither an initial advantage; they were thus cautious, with tame kicks in the opening exchanges.

As the fight progressed, Mukul came into the ascendancy, with a series of well-placed kicks driving Punit beyond the arena leading to Punit’s being deducted a point. Mukul’s aggression then led to a foul: having lunged with his knee raised, the referee had to deduct him a point. Unsettled, he became defensive and Punit, sensing an opportunity, charged with a combination of a drop kick and spinning reverse kick, slamming into his chest guard and earning a point. Punit now seizing the advantage, then laid into him with a powerful flurry of roundhouse kicks, earning a number of points.

Regrouping, Mukul charged once again, driving Punit to the far corner before the referee separated them. However, Mukul started to visibly tire, his stance wavering and his attacks few and far in between.  Punit sensing his fatigue, grew more aggressive, receiving multiple hits to his torso but counter-attacking powerfully with his complete repertoire of hook and roundhouse kick combinations.

In a bid to conserve his energy, Mukul started to adapt, parrying or dodging the first kick in a combo before closing the distance to attempt close-quarters combat, Punit cleverly counterattacked, now targeting the head to keep him at a distance where he had a disadvantage.  The round was close, but Mukul’s second round collapse had sealed the result in Punit’s favour.