PATU Clarifies Use of Wildcards for Pan American Championships, but Poomsae Outline Still Maintains Different Registration Criteria
The Pan American Taekwondo Union (PATU) issued a clarification regarding the conditions for using the wildcards granted for the 2026 G4 Pan American Championships in Rio de Janeiro, in response to questions raised about their application across different disciplines. In sparring, the clarification established the criteria for athletes born in 2009 or earlier. However, in Poomsae, although the clarification refers to World Taekwondo regulations for other disciplines, the official event outline still retains registration wording that continues to allow athletes aged 17 or older.
The Pan American Taekwondo Union (PATU) issued a clarification regarding the conditions for using the wildcards granted for the 2026 G4 Pan American Championships in Rio de Janeiro, in response to questions raised about their application across different disciplines. In sparring, the clarification established the criteria for athletes born in 2009 or earlier. However, in Poomsae, although the clarification refers to World Taekwondo regulations for other disciplines, the official event outline still retains registration wording that continues to allow athletes aged 17 or older.
In the document for the Senior Pan American Sparring Championships, PATU defined the Adult category as “17 years or older (born in 2009 or earlier),” that is, 17 years of age or older, and also allowed the participation of athletes qualified via wildcard alongside the base quota for each national team. That same outline lists the events that awarded those wildcards and establishes that they are personal and non-transferable.
PATU’s subsequent clarification addressed precisely that point: wildcards obtained at 2025 PATU events may be used in the G4 sparring competition by athletes born in 2009 or earlier. At the same time, the aclaratory text indicated that in the other disciplines, the World Taekwondo regulations would be followed. This framework aligned the situation for Kyorugi but shifted the focus to Poomsae.
And that is where the discrepancy in the documents appears. In the outline for the 2026 Pan American Taekwondo Poomsae Championships, PATU maintains the formula “Adult: 17 years or older (born in 2009 or earlier)” in the “Categories and Ages” section. Furthermore, that same document states that the latest updated WT Poomsae competition rules will be used and that registrations will be conducted through the WT GMS SimplyCompete system.
Thus, the situation is divided into two aspects. In one case, PATU has already clarified the scope of wildcards and, in Poomsae, indicated that the same age criteria applied in sparring do not apply. In the other, the official event outline continues to present a registration condition that would allow 17-year-old athletes to compete in Poomsae, even though the regulatory framework invoked for that discipline points in another direction.
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