EXAMINATION ORDEAL

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33857, 31 May 1975, Page 4

EXAMINATION ORDEAL

Blood, toil, and sweat appear to be prerequisites for winning a black belt in karate — not just fighting a successful battle.

Spectators discovered this last Sunday when they watched 23-year-old Bill Bowie become the fourteenth member of the Mas Oyama Club in Christchurch to reach that standard after a rigorous examination lasting two hours and a half.

The club's requirements for a first degree black belt are among the toughest in the world and the necessary 150 minute ordeal is more akin to an initiation ceremony for a young Indian brave than a sporting award.

Aspirants are asked to have a warm-up run, do kicks and general calisthenics — with perhaps 100 odd kicks thrown in for good measure, demonstrate 41-step sparring, perform 15 ordinary kata (pre-arranged forms) and one weapon kata, and then, possibly, do some advanced combination.

Not content with this marathon, the examiners make the candidate suffer further by fighting 90 second spars with 40 different people. He is also asked to display some literary skills by writing a mini-thesis on some aspect of karate; Bowie wrote on the importance of the mind and spirit in the sport.

Bowie gave an outstanding display against

his many opponents — all exhibiting a great variety of techniques and standards — drawing blood on serveral and managing to give one of the instructors, a black belt himself, a wound above the left eye which needed seven stitches. Like a lot of previous candidates, Bowie collapsed during his last fight and had to be lifted up to continue. At the end he had no skin left on his knuckles.

“The test is designed to: see how a man performs j when he has no energy left and has nothing left except his will to continue,” said Renzie Hanham a third dan black belt. “It tests his psychology', helping him to, find out something about: himself”. The photograph shows I an exhausted Bowie, (right) blocking a kick; from Sony Marriner, one: of the lower graded members of the club, in one; of his last fights.