General

Registration closed last week and the final draw will be online soon.  We are prepared for a full day of competition, and we hope you are as well as we have 700 competitors joining us. If you are planning on coming by train, you will arrive at train station “Helmond”, which is located at Verlengde Spoorstraat in Helmond. From there you can take a taxi, bus, or even walk to the Sports Center / Hotel. It is about a 1km walk.

Plan your trip using 9292.nl (bus) or ns.nl (train). The train from Amsterdam Schiphol to Helmond is an intercity and there’s no need to switch trains, please check this page for more details. If you are with 4 or more people, take advantage of the Group Ticket available for travel during non-peak hours! This will save you a significant amount per person!

For those traveling by car, use the following address for your navigation system:

Scheepsboulevard 2
5705 KZ Helmond

There is a parking place underneath the hotel which costs € 10,- per day, there’s also free parking close to the hotel on the various streets surrounding it.

We hope everyone is ready, as we are getting closer to the event every single day. We are finalizing the preparations and we closed the registration yesterday. As it stands we have 700 competitors from 108 different teams and 20 different countries. The team is working hard on creating the draft of the draw, this should go online on Friday the 19th, with the final draw being scheduled to be published on Thursday the 25th. We will share more details about transportation and parking as soon as possible, so that everyone can plan their travel accordingly and timely. We are looking forward to a great event, and hope to see all of you 1.5 week from now.

The registration for the Open Dutch 2024 has just opened up on Sportdata. As already mentioned in the invite, Please note, there is no D-Class and the competition is limited to 700 competitors. For the A-class pre-juniors, juniors and seniors there will also be overall sparring, but this year the overall sparring competition will be point-stop sparring. Registration closes on Tuesday 16th of January 2024, but remember when we reach 700 competitors it will close sooner!

We’ve had some questions about accommodations, you can find all the details here, and make sure to use the booking code for our special rates. Also note that some accommodations are filling up fast, so book sooner rather than later.

We have just updated the prices and packages for the different accommodations in, and around, Helmond. We have four pricing agreements with different hotels in the areas, which we can highly recommend staying at. We have a great two nights package deal at the Golden Tulip West-Ende Hotel, which is our personal recommendation, as it comes with 2x breakfast buffet and 2x dinner buffet for Friday (starting at 20:00, to allow for the weigh-in) and the Saturday (starting at 19:00). We also have a great deal for Best Western wellness Hotel Nobis Asten, and we have just added Fletcher Kloosterhotel Willibrordhaeghe as a brand new option at a fantastic price. Make sure to go to our Accommodations page for the full details, and book a room while you still can!

We also would like to let all of you know that we have just uploaded the official invite for the Open Dutch 2024, both in Dutch and in English. You can find the invites here. One thing we would like to point out is that we are trying something new this year, overall sparring will be using the “point-stop” sparring system instead of the continuous sparring system. We hope this change brings something extra to the competition and creates excitement! Are you up for the challenge?!

Last weekend we organized a seminar in Helmond which was all about sparring techniques. The seminar was hosted by Fin Heesom and Will Taylor from Team Elite Kickboxing. Judging by the responses during, and after, the day, we feel it is fair to say that it was a huge success. New techniques and ideas were shared by Fin and Will, and of course they were practiced by all the participants over the course of the day. The morning was reserved for the juniors, and late morning/afternoon it was the senior’s turn.

Of course we had two photographers walking around for most of the day, and they have shared their pictures with us, you can find them via the links below, and we will share them on Instagram in the upcoming weeks. We would like to thank Duncan Epping and Harry van den Hurk for spending the day with us and shooting so many pictures. Once again we would like to thank Fin and Will for taking the time to fly out and host this seminar, we truly appreciate it.

• Facebook – Album by Duncan Epping
• Facebook – Album by Harry van den Hurk