CULLINGWORTH’S Ellie Bowden won a third successive British National Championships title as Horizon Taekwondo Academy claimed eight medals at the event.

She triumphed in the female juniors under-55kg category at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

In the semi-final she defeated Londoner Sandhya Balakrishnan from Gurumu, 17-5, before defeating Abbie Baker from Manchester Aces, 17-3 in the final.

Abbie, aged 17, had earlier won the Senior under-57kg female group so this was an excellent outcome for Ellie.

2015 champions Lauren Watson, Thomas Henley and Jamie Kidd missed out on golds in 2016 but were good enough to each pick up second places in their categories.

Jamie, from Silsden, won his semi final 18-1 against Amine Djelladj of Empsi Taekwondo, before losing to European Champion Owen Turner 9-7 in the final.

With almost 900 competitors taking part, this was never going to be an easy tournament.

Horzian Master Rick Simpson said: “We had to scale back the majority of our team members due to costs, with it being in London at the Olympic Park, an excellent venue.

“Accommodation and logistics were always going to be the main challenge. We managed to get 14 competitors into the event and each competitor did their utmost for the team.

“We’ll be back with a stronger team next year – fund-raising starts now. We had some really tough matches which we won, and narrowly lost out in two of the finals – both of which could have gone either way so goes to show how close those were.”