By Mikayla van Loon
Having started Muay Thai only three years ago, Chirnside Park’s Erin Carter never envisioned she would be crowned a gold medallist at the World Championships in early November.
But returning from Turkey only recently, the 24-year-old can proudly say she has achieved that success.
“It was a big achievement. Something definitely at the start of the year, I never would have envisioned for myself. Everything has gone very quickly this year with my progression through the sport,” she said.
“It was an amazing opportunity just to be invited and then to go over there and actually win for Australia and bring home the gold was really great.”
Getting seven fights under her belt this year, an ISKA representative for Australia came to watch her fourth fight and Erin said “they liked how I performed so they invited me to be on the Australian team.”
In the lead up to the competition, Erin underwent a seven week training camp where she trained six days a week, sometimes twice a day.
While this physically prepared her, nothing could prepare her for the scale of the competition with 39 countries from five continents fighting.
“It was nothing like I have experienced here. It was very full on. I’ve only done regular fights where you go and fight one person, whereas this was a tournament and it was massive,” she said.
“Some teams were a lot larger than others. So some teams had hundreds of athletes but our Australia team was relatively small with seven.”
The structure of the tournament meant that had Erin lost any of her fights, she would have been out of the competition.
Winning her first fight, 45 minutes later she was back facing an opponent, a big difference compared to regular fights here in Australia, as she had little to no recovery time.
I won the first two on the first few days, which was pretty hard, but I came back the next day for the final. I fought against the Brazilian champion…it was definitely, I’d say, my toughest fight to date. So they were super hardstyle over there.
“So that last one was a little bit of a war but I got the decision in the end so that went the full three rounds and the judges thought I was the victor and I got the gold.”
As Erin’s coach at WFC Chirnside Park, Daniel Den Braber said watching how committed she is to the sport has really set Erin on the right path to get her where she is now.
“The two biggest factors [for success] are sacrifice and discipline in my opinion, because everyone looks from the outside and sees the glory shot of standing in the ring with their hand raised, but the first thing is sacrificing lots of things,” he said.
“Erin definitely does that and I saw that in her probably in the early stages in her training of committing and turning up every day.”
Playing to Erin’s strengths, Daniel said they focused on her ability to use her legs to become mainly a kick fighter and a knee fighter.
“Once she gets a hold of her opponents within that closer knee range she’s probably getting a reputation for really hurting some girls with those knees.
“In Muay Thai there’s all aspects of punching, kicking and elbowing but Erin’s strengths are kicking and kneeing.
“Then we tried to balance out the all round game so she couldn’t get too exposed because going over there we didn’t know anything about any other opponents. So we needed to be pretty sharp in all aspects, which is a credit to Erin, she worked hard every day.”
Proud of Erin’s achievements, Daniel said she will definitely be one to watch as Erin looks to go pro in the near future.
“I want to make a whole career out of this sport. That’s my plan. Hopefully, make some money, and be successful,” Erin said.
“The World Championship opportunity to head over there and represent Australia, I really hope, and I think it definitely will open doors for me in the future.”
By taking this opportunity to the next level, Erin said she also hopes it increases the awareness of the sport particularly for girls.
“We have such a great community of girls here and showing them, by proving to them that girls can get in the ring and be tough…There’s room for us here too.”
