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A team of eight local taekwondo enthusiasts have returned from the latest Pan Pacific Masters Games at the Gold Coast weighed down with bronze, silver and gold medals – but none carry so much weight as that around Fay Shacklock’s neck.
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Emerging with yet another gold medal in power breaking, Fay has made the record books by being undefeated in her event for 25 years. Winning her first event in 1991, she said it’s a goal that’s been awhile in the making.
“I planned to be undefeated for 25 years because I don’t think it will ever be broken,” she said, flushed with pride.
“I was elated. At the end of the day, it was because I’d done another milestone. If you do something for 36 years you want to be good at it, and you want to continue being good at it.”
Power breaking is the art of striking and splitting solid surfaces with your head, arms, elbows, hands, feet, or knees. Fay, a seventh dan international taekwondo master and ground breaker in the sport for women nationally, said power breaking is not traditionally popular amongt women because of the injuries it can incur.
“I like it because it’s the very small minority of women in the world who take on the task... They get too scared to power break,” she said, casually referring to three broken bones she incurred in a (nonetheless successful) break across the Tasman.
Learning the art by buying up second hand roof tiles, her biggest lineup was once 13 tiles, broken in one hit when she was 40. The winning gold at this month’s Pan Pacific Masters was awarded after she broke five one inch boards of radiated pine with an axe kick in one hit.
“Believing that you can do it is number one. If there is any doubt in your mind you can’t do it, you won’t. It’s about mental preparation. In competition I set myself for a little while. I suppose it’s meditation more than anything,” she said.
Turning 62 in January, Fay plans to keep kicking on.
“I’ll just keep going now. In the next couple of months I’ll plan another journey, have another goal. A goal is important, it keeps you alive, it keeps you dreaming.”
Continuing her studies towards reaching eighth then ninth dan (nine levels above black belt), she is kept in good company by her local taekwondo students who also competed at the Masters games, which welcomed 13,000 participants across 43 sports. Lee Cotterell won silver and bronze, Scott Gabriell gold and silver, Glen Flynn silver and bronze, Belinda Shaw gold, silver, bronze, Preston Gowing gold, two silvers, bronze, John Wood gold, silver and Jo Bourke gold and silver.
