TALENTED taekwondo hopefuls from Dudley and Hagley claimed a clutch of medals when they competed at the North Midlands Championships which took place at Derby Arena.

Although Dan Oldman was narrowly defeated by multiple world champion Warren Vice in the individual sparring, he still went onto win gold in the men's destruction division and bronze in tag team sparring.

There was an impressive display from 15-year-old Zemaria Farquharson in the ladies patterns division. Despite missing out on the medals by just a few points, she did come up against world title holders and Olympic champions.

But Zemaria still finished up with two silver medals in the both individual and team sparring divisions.

The Sobainsky family had a day to remember winning six medals between them.

Mum and Dad Alex and Arti both won bronze medals in their respective sparring divisions, while Arti also won another medal in the team sparring.

Youngest daughter Rhianna put in a fantastic performance to finish fourth in the team sparring, but eldest daughter Anushka trumped them all with three medals, taking two bronze in the pattern and sparring and a silver in her team.

Youngest winner was Charlie Collyer who only started competing this year, but duly took his fourth gold medal for individual sparring.

Other Dudley and Hagley medal winners included Simon Williams, who took silver in sparring, Kate Mason, who snapped up bronze in patterns, gold in sparring and another gold in the strike pad event.

Chris Kemmings and Jamie Bryant both claimed bronze in sparring while there were strong performances from Kiymah and Kohen Farquharson plus Chris Rayment-Bishop.

The team are now training hard for the British Championships, the biggest event of the year which takes place on November 29.

Anyone interested in taking up taekwondo should contact senior instructor Vince Farquharson on 07971 003079.