Dylan's on top of the world

Westmeath’s small band of world champions has a new member, Rathowen teenager Dylan McKeon.

Last Sunday, the 14 year old St Finian’s College student won a gold medal at the Karate World Championships that were held in the City West centre in Dublin. In the final of the mini cadets section of the Kata competion, Dylan saw off the challenge of six competitors from across the world to be crowned world champion. Kata is a set sequence of karate moves designed around an imaginary confrontation against one or more opponents.

Dylan, who was representing Ireland for the first time at the championships, trains at both his local karate club in Rathowen and St Mary’s Karate Club in Athlone. He first took up karate at the age of five and is currently a first dan black belt.

“He loves it,” his proud father Paul told the Westmeath Examiner. “He’s been training for four nights a week for the last 14 months. He wants to keep going with karate and go up as far as he can. His dream is to get over to Okinawa in Japan to meet the Japanese masters. He trained with a few of them last week before the championship and they invited him over.”

With a world title under his (black) belt at the age of 14, it looks like we’ll be hearing a lot about Dylan McKeon in the coming years.