PART 7 - World Karate Federation

WORLD
TI
AT
E F E D E R AT
N
FEDERA
AR
TE
K
KA
RA
ON
PART 7
IO
Budo international magazine
has published an interview
with WKF President, Antonio
Espinós, in English, French
and Spanish. Due to the length
and interest of this article, we
have considered convenient
to post it divided into several
parts.
We shouldn’t forget that this is all top-level sporting politics. For those of us who operate in the area
of traditional karate where all we care about – with a few honourable exceptions – are the day-today goings-on within the privacy of the dojo, all this seems very far removed from us. To me, except
for the WKF World Championships in my home town, Guadalajara, all this is a world apart from the
way I experience karate, but I do understand that at the level of top competition, sporting politics,
and so on, that’s the way things work. It’s like different people speaking different languages. At
the Guadalajara World Championships in 2013 I was able to see how all this is a movement that
financially affects everybody, everywhere. Those who do the organisation, those who provide the
funds. I have no problem with any of that. But, as I say, it’s quite different for some people not to
care about any of that movement because they understand it not to have anything to do with how
they practise karate.
Antonio, how have you been able to juggle doing your job at a major construction firm with your
duties and the WKF? And what about your family, because you’ve got four children, haven’t you?
Yes, four children. Two daughters, aged 35 and 33, one with two children of her own and the
other with one, and two sons, aged 27 and 23, who still live at home with me. And, as you
know, I’m a civil engineer and I’ve been doing that until last year, when I retired.
And how have you managed to keep on working with all the travelling you have to do for the WKF?
Well, by travelling less than I do now since I’ve retired. And with a lot of hard work and
dedication. It’s been quite hard. I graduated in 1973 and I’ve been working since then, 39
years, without missing a single day, working full time. They didn’t let me take early retirement.
1
WORLD
TI
AT
E F E D E R AT
N
FEDERA
AR
TE
K
KA
RA
ON
PART 7
IO
Really?
It wasn’t in their interests. I ran the firm’s Madrid office but for very many years later I was at
international, and there aren’t many people with experience who can do that job. They didn’t
let me until I turned 65, and even then they wanted me to carry on! But no.
You’ve never been paid a salary as such at the WKF, have you?
No. Never.
Now let’s turn back to your early days in karate, as a karateka. What are your first memories of
karate?
We have to go back to 1969. I started with the Koreans. First with Kim at the Samurai gym on
Juan Bravo street. Then Kim left Samurai and set up the Kimicho gym with another Korean,
Cho. What they did was known then as Korean karate. We competed for Madrid, with students
of Yamashita, Ishimi, and other Japanese.
How was your first contact with Antonio Oliva, with whom you would go on to have close dealings?
Oliva was with Cho. I first met him at the Kimicho gym. It’d be 1969 or 1970. Then those two
Koreans split up and one of Cho’s brothers whose name was Shik came in and they set up
the Shikicho.
At the history exhibition that I put on at the World Karate Championships in Guadalajara, I include
a picture of you at an international event.
Yes. That photo is the first trip abroad we made with the owner of the Samurai, who was
Fernando Franco de Sarabia, the director of the karate department within the Spanish Judo
Federation. For that first international competition – European Senior Championships- we
went to Paris to compete at the Pierre de Coubertin stadium in 1971. There were three of us
competing: Antonio Oliva, Jesus Pastor, an architect, and me. The three of us. And now I
think about it, I’ve been to the Coubertin as a competitor, then as President of the Spanish
federation, the European Federation and the World Federation.
So you then started to have more to do with Antonio Oliva?
Yes. In 1973 I went with Oliva to his gym which he opened in Bravo Murillo street.
Where Dominique Valera showed up sometimes, because they were fifty-fifty partners.
Right. Valera came, who had also been our coach on the national team. In 1973 I finished my
engineering degree and went to work out of Madrid. I kept dabbling in karate now and then
2
WORLD
TI
AT
E F E D E R AT
N
FEDERA
AR
TE
K
KA
RA
ON
PART 7
IO
but I couldn’t train any more… and in 1974 I stopped altogether”.
For good?
No, because I did some teaching in Cullera, while I was working on the Mediterranean
motorway, which we were building at the time. I worked on the southern section from Valencia
to Gandía, and then I was also living for a while in Benicassim until 1978. I taught karate two
days a week at a gym in Castellón. They gave me 60% of the money from my classes and that
was more than my salary at work back then. They offered me more classes but I said no. I did
it because I enjoyed it but I didn’t want to become a slave to it.
And by then it was under the name of karate, I assume, rather than Korean karate.
Yes. By then it was karate – Shotokan. Because I’d been with Antonio Oliva, it was karate by
then. From there I’d been travelling to Madrid to do the training for my monitor and regional
coach’s badges, which was organised at the industrial engineering school back then, near
Plaza de San Juan de la Cruz. I got my black belt in 1973.
So when did you stop practising karate for good?
In 1978, when I started working in Madrid, I was simply too busy so it was just no longer an
option. I did some training with Oliva but… it just all became too hard.
Interview by Salvador Herraiz
3