Teen kickboxer eyes Team GB after two world titles

A TEENAGER who has become a world kickboxing champion wants to compete for Team GB at the Olympics.

Fionn Maher, 14, from Binfield Heath, began competing in November 2023 and has gone on to win 13 of medals.

Then, in August last year, he became a world champion for his age group and training level having won two gold medals at the World Kickboxing Organisation in Barnsley.

Fionn triumphed in the “points fighting” and “light continuous” categories and won silver in the advanced “hands only” contest, a style of kickboxing which uses the hands for blocking and striking.

He was then invited to represent England in October in the World Karate and Kickboxing Union Championships in Rhodes, Greece.

Fionn reached the quarter-finals in point fighting in the boys’ junior category for his weight range and placed fifth in the “light contact” and ninth in the “kick light” categories.

But one of his proudest achievements was when he secured bronze in “karate kumite” event. He lost out to Din Pullmann, from Germany, who had been competing for nine years.

Fionn, who attends Gillotts School in Henley, said: “I lost by about three kicks, it was so close. Din was the three-times world champion and he was the coach’s son.

“There was that much adrenaline in me, I don’t remember much of the fight but I can just remember getting off the mat and thinking, ‘what on earth just happened’.

“You have no clue who you are competing against because there are no classes or categories, it’s just, you’re this age and this height, go fight.

“With some fights, where you are told, some people will pre-study the person they are fighting and they will look at how they train and what they do – their specific style or their faults. But with the competitions I fight, I kind of just get thrown in.

“When I was competing in Rhodes, I was at the bottom of my age group. If I was heavier, I would be more likely to get bigger people who would be older, better, more advanced and stronger.”

Karate kumite is a sparring match where opponents use controlled strikes and blocks to score points based on technique. The goal is to accumulate more points than the opponent in a set time.

Fionn said: “There’s a level of resolve because there’s a target and you’re aiming for it. But there’s always a low-level feeling of panic.

“When you calm down and focus, you fight very effectively because of the duality. It’s the most emotion you will ever feel in your life and you have to be as calm headed and nonchalant as possible at the same time.

“It’s a lot of repressed emotion but the two emotions are excitement and anxiety at the same time. When you bottle it up in those two-minutes of fighting and see the hand go up to show you have won, it feels so good but it can also be so horrible to lose.”

Fionn got into martial arts when he was five but it was a friend who introduced him to Nemesis Martial Arts and Fitness.

He trains for kickboxing and karate at the Loddon Valley leisure centre, the Shinfield Infant and Nursery School and Rivermead leisure centre, both in Reading three times a week but also uses other clubs on other days to “keep up”.

Fionn said: “I started taekwondo aged five and I trained all the way through until the coronavirus lockdown. Then I found that my friend was kickboxing and he invited me to go with him.

“I'm lucky because from doing taekwondo for all those years, I got used to kickboxing and really enjoyed it. I'm quite a competitive person so I got into it deeply really quickly and started doing more and complex things to get further ahead. Now, I’m doing all sorts of sessions.”

Fionn also does gymnastics, tennis and parkour and adheres to a strict diet and routine to ensure he’s in top fighting condition. His calorie intake is about 3,410 per day, which includes vegetable and protein-rich foods.

He said: “If we’re coming up to a competition, I’ll have fish and rice and broccoli because it’s lighter on the body. If I’m not I’ll have a dense protein to help the muscle build. Sometimes I’m on chicken salad but sometimes I’m on two steaks a day.”

To get to a high level in the sport, he said dedication and hard work is essential. He usually wakes up at 5.45am before doing a workout or exercise session before school.

Fionn said: “I tend to go for a run from 6am to 6.30am and then I will do 15 to 30 minutes of stretching to stop myself from seizing up and also in that time I will do a workout. Sometimes, I will do 50 push ups and some squats and a run. Some people will do a full gym workout.

“With fighting especially, it has got to be one of the most competitive sports out there. Because of the nature of how fighting works, missing a week of training could lose you multiple medals in the future.

“You always have to train at least once to three times a week. The best of the best will train three times a day every day for the rest of their life.

“The sport is a lifestyle. It’s not exactly a very lovey-dovey environment. If you don’t punch correctly, you will be doing push ups until the end of the session.

“People train so often because there’s such a large course load. It’s like trying to do an A-level in the span of a couple of months just to get ready for another fight.”

Since he started learning the sport, he has learned to develop different fight styles which he switches between to see what’s most effective in different competitions. Fionn said: “You have to throw a punch or kick from a certain angle and distance. You have to throw in a certain way to make sure you don't injure yourself or the other person.

“You then have to learn how to put those into combinations and how to put those into actual fights because, when you get into the fight, it's very different to just hitting a pad or a bag.

“You have to learn about how to move correctly, then you learn what to punch while you move. You learn tactics on what you should do before you punch and what you do while you move, why you should move and how to move. Movement is the most important part.

Fionn, who hopes to make Team GB in the future, said balancing this lifestyle with school and his social life can be demanding but he enjoys the routine he is in.

He said: “The reason I started waking up so early is because I have limited social time. I’m trying to balance life and training. My friends might text me to ask where I am and I’ll say, I'm actually 30 miles away. I'm training right now.

“It's not a social sport at all really because of the amount of dedication you're putting into it.”

Fionn is supported in competitions by his father, Keith, who works in information security, and mother Kim. His mother often helps with his schedule and diet and his sister Orla has recently joined a martial arts venue.

Mr Maher said: “It’s not a surprise what Fionn has achieved in a short space of time because he works so hard. It has been exhausting being his sports psychologist, chef and chauffeur for the last year or so.

“We’re pre-GCSE and academics are the most important thing so we get the best out of ourselves in the time that we’ve got. There is a life outside of it but we’re hugely delighted. We are so proud of him.

“There are good times and bad times but he’s already made lifelong friends in a very competitive environment.”