Bushido Martial Arts Clondalkin, now reaching it’s 10th year has been growing in size, popularity and now has
finally produced a WAKO European gold medallist. Roy Baker’s highly successful Bushido Martial Arts associatio
has already a proven record in growing and making wako European and World champions like Darragh Geoghegan,
Elaine Small, Ilija Salerno and Lavina Cormack so it was not a surprise when Baker’s most successful senior coach
Ilija Salerno (a former WAKO world and WAKO-Pro World champ) produced a junior superstar in the likes of
Karyn Nikitina a this years WAKO junior European kickboxing Championships.

11 year old Karyna Nikitina, from Kingswood, tallaght, has become the first junior WAKO European Champion t
hail from the Bushido Clondalkin outlet, which Ilija Salerno runs on a full time basis for the past 10 years.

Karyna travelled to the junior European championships along with a strong junior squad of 50 athletes and coaches
along with team mate Padraig Mcmenamy and assistant coach of Bushido Clondalkin Ken Spillane.

This is Karyna’s 2 year competing at the very top level (wako world and European championship), where last year sh
was narrowly beaten by a Hungarian opponent in the quarter finals of the World Championships which were held i
Serbia. This year though, she was very determined to reach at least the finals as she started the season off with a
bang, convincingly taking the junior irish national title and along with it the Irish Open international title which
is like a world championship in itself as all the top athletes compete at that event.

Karyna’s hunger for European domination was very impressive from the start of the championships (European) as
she immediately set the mark by beating her first opponent from Bosnia-Herzegovina 17-6, just short of the
maximum score win. At this stage already rival coaches were taking notes of her convincing win and her next
opponent in the semi finals suffered the same consequence as her Italian opponent got the same win margin
of 11-2 in favour of Karyna.This win now put her in the finals and there was no stopping her at this stage as she
overpowered her opponent from team Germany 8-1 in two rounds, crowing herself European Champion 2011.

Assistant coach, Ken Spillane who was her coach on the scene said “Once Karyna started from day 1 there was no
stopping her! I could see the hunger in her eyes and I knew she wanted the title” Senior coach Ilija Salerno adds”
Karyna has progressed into such a strong fighter this year, everybody is taking notes of her on how to possibly beat
her", “this win for her is such a proud moment for her, myself as her coach, the whole club and for Clondalkin in
general”

Next year the newly crowned European Champion will be put to an even bigger test as she will be one of the
favourites to take the even bigger prize of World Champion status.

Team mate Padraig Mcmenamy was at his first international tournament and started off with a bang beating one
of thefavourites from team Hungary 5-3 and this set himself up with a tougher test versus the current wako world
champion from Italy in the quarter finals. Unfortunately experience got the better of him and lost to the much
stronger Italian champion. But none the less Padraig gave his all in the two rounder fight and his first
international loss has made him even hungrier to reach the world championships next year which will be held in
Ireland, Westport for the very first time.