Callum Dicks and Matt Godfrey both delivered Gold Medal winning performances to add to English coarse anglings ever growing store of World Championship wins at this year’s Youth World Championships in Ghent, Belgium along its famous Watersportbaan. Day one of the competition saw a great performance by the under 18 squad as they finished tied in second place on 16 points just adrift of Italy on 14 points. Day 2 with a not so favourable draw saw them slip to 4th place, and eventually taking the bronze medal. The highlight of the day was Matt Godfrey’s third individual title with a perfect score of 2 points and a weight of 10kg and 10grams. The U22’s faired less well on day one, needing to draw low numbers in A Section and high in D Section. Unfortunately two English anglers drew the opposite ends of both sections, and England finished the day with a 42 point total, a full 28 points behind, San Marino on 14 points who put in an outstanding first days performance. Day 2 saw coach and team manager Mark Downes adopt only marginally different tactics, and with the additional benefit of drawing a good number in D Section England ran out easy winners with an outstanding 13 points. This meant that the battle for the medals was unbelievably close. Serbia ended up winning on 52 points, San Marino 54.5 points, Croatia on 55 points, beating England on the same points by a mere 40 grams. Once again it was a great come back performance by England. It was a full hour after the event when the results were posted and it became apparent that Callum Dicks had in fact won the individual gold with a 3 + 2 total of 5 points, making it a super double gold for England. Mark Downes stated that “both teams performed superbly well over the week and every other squad was totally impressed by our professionalism. It is fantastic that we won both individuals, but we were so close to us scooping all four gold medals”. |
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