‘It’s never too late to start again,’ says international karate champ

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

Saloner took three gold medals in the over-45 category at the GKR Karate International World Cup X held in London this past weekend.

While she was a black belt when she moved to Australia in 2005, she struggled to find a similar style to goju-ryu, which she’d practiced in South Africa. “I tried other styles of karate when we got to Australia, and they just weren’t similar enough,” she says. “They didn’t fit me.” So, she took more than ten years off from karate, and focused on her husband, son, and career as a social worker.

“It was only about a year and a half ago that I found gokan-ryu, which is a similar style to goju-ryu,” she says. “I’ve loved it, and gone back quite passionately.”

It was the right time, says Saloner. She felt her son was now old enough for her to follow her passion, and her husband encouraged her to start again. So, Saloner reduced her hours at the Australian College of Applied Psychology, where she now works as a guest lecturer and part-time supervisor, giving her sufficient training and family time. “I wanted something to work towards, a new challenge.”

While she had to start from scratch, Saloner was fast-tracked to reach competitive status. “I’m not yet back on black belt, I’m building my way back there,” she says. Yet it’s been an amazing 18 months. “I’d never competed before, but in joining this style, there were opportunities to do so.”

Saloner entered and won the regional tournament. From there, she went onto the states and national championships at the end of 2018, where she won double gold. “The golds at nationals boosted my competition confidence,” she says, “so I decided to go ahead and compete in the world cup, and I qualified well.”

Saloner entered three events: the kata (a series of set choreographed moves on different grades), and the kumite (freestyle fighting), both individual events; and a team kata event where three teammates synchronise the kata. She took gold in all three.

“I’m over the moon,” she says. “I left for the world cup hoping I could just bring home something. I’m a very competitive, hungry person by nature, so I did everything I could to prepare myself for the gold standard, but I had no idea what to expect.

“My wins were surprising, exciting, and very validating for me as a karateka.” Saloner competed as an Australian, as it’s one of only four countries in the world cup that do this style of karate.

While she resumed her training only recently, Saloner has karate in her blood. “I was born into a karate family, so I was inevitably going to do karate at some stage,” she says.

“My father was already a black belt, and was training in Doornfontein when I was born. There was a very traditional dojo upstairs from his work, and he started training there with shihan (master instructor) Stuart Booth. My brother started to train with him too when he was just old enough to walk, and I began my training there at about the age of six.

“We were living in the Lyndhurst area, so our shihan set up a little dojo gym in Bramley, and we trained there,” recalls Saloner. “There were often events on weekends though, so we’d go to the head dojo in Doornfontein.

“We’d be training with people of all races in the middle of apartheid. It was an eye into a world that we were not exposed to in the rest of our lives. With everything being segregated and demarcated racially, it was very unusual to walk into a dojo where everyone was divided according to their karate grade, not the colour of their skin.

“Equality was acted out in the dojo. Race was not an issue. That exposure was quite profound for me.”

After school, Saloner’s brother encouraged her to go for her black belt. “My shihan had moved the dojo from Doornfontein to Yeoville, where we’d go for 05:00 weekday training,” she says. “Here, we’d meet up with guys that had woken up at 03:30 to run from Soweto or Alex to the dojo in Yeoville to make training on time. The spirit between us was incredible.

“There was camaraderie, and a respect that developed through our karate that I’ve never replicated anywhere else. It was very humbling for me to be able to train with these people who were surviving incredibly tough circumstances, but still showed commitment and dedication to their karate. There was very little reward, it was just about doing it for yourself.

“The instructor himself was – and still is – a very tough man. He’s a role model, and he was an amazing mentor for me,” she says. “I think a lot of the success I’ve reaped this past weekend was due to the foundation that he instilled in me. He was a very traditional man, based on Japanese old-school-type karate, where there was a lot of repetition and focus on detail in our stance, techniques, and form.”

Saloner remained loyal to her shihan and accepted the fact that she couldn’t compete because of South Africa’s apartheid landscape. “I loved the training and my identity as a karateka,” she says. “But it upset our family a lot that our instructor had to deal with the fact that he’d been snubbed by his colleagues in the martial-arts field.

“There was no compromise on the multiracialism of our dojo. We realised the consequences were unfair, one of the many injustices of apartheid society. It was part of a learning curve of understanding the dynamics of growing up in South African society.”

Speaking of resuming her karate training at this stage of her life, Saloner says it’s all about having the right mindset. “We shouldn’t let our age define us. It doesn’t have to be a limitation. We don’t know where our limits are. I still feel strong and fit. Achieving goals is largely about what’s going on in our mind. We have the ability to push ourselves so much further than we think.”