South East Koi Club - For Koi Carp Hobbists in Kent - Surrey - Sussex

THE ALL ENGLAND YOUNG KOI SHOW 2022 RESULTS

The South East Koi Club held their 3rd All England Young Koi Show over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend. Unlike The All England Koi Show held in September, this Show was created to give Koi keepers who own smaller Koi a chance to win a major award.

The Size groups of this Show are the same as The All England Koi Show which is pretty much standard across most of the UK Shows, e.g. the Size 1 is from 15 to 25cm going up in 10cm increments until the upper limit of Size 5 at 65cm. The Show Classes are the standard 13 too.

On Wednesday, prior to the Show, as always, there were many South East Koi Club members at the Showground, ready to set up the Show, and by the end of the day they were filling vats. By Thursday lunchtime the major part of the work was completed and it was just a case of sorting out a few cosmetics.

The Koi Dealers arrived on Friday, all the regulars that we all know, plus some new ones to the Show. It was a very busy day as exhibitors were bringing in their Koi for benching too. By the end of Friday 341 Koi had been benched and everything was ready to go.

This year they intended to have 30 vats and although it wasn’t advertised for more exhibitors, they had to increase the number of vats to 36.

The International team of Judges arrived, and after taking refreshments, split into teams and began the process of judging the Show. In another area the benching support team were entering the results on computer as they came in, ready for printing the photos and results which would be displayed over the vats on Sunday morning.

This year there was at least eight Koi keepers who were exhibiting for the first time and one of them, Craig Hooton, won Grand Champion with his Size 5 Sanke. Andy Baker won Size 4 Champion with a Kohaku, which had an absolutely superb white skin. Another regular winner was Robert Robson (Bob) who travelled down from Newcastle with his superb Size 3 Sanke to take the Size 3 Champion Award. The size limit for Size 2 is 35cm and Andy Day just crept in with his 34cm Showa. Another exhibitor who just scraped in on the size was David Edge with his 24.5cm Sandan Kohaku to win the Size 1 Champion Award. As always, the standard of entries was very high and many impressive Koi didn’t get an award, but we were grateful to all their owners for bringing them to the Show for us all to see.

The presentations were made on Sunday afternoon when we thanked our main sponsor, Saki-Hikari, who generously supplied Koi Food for all the winners and South East Koi Club members who helped to erect and take down the Show, also together with Darren of A4Koi, Brian of Walcot Koi and Deron of Select Nishikigoi International sponsered the South East Koi Club’s fleeces. We also thanked Columbo BV who again supported the Show by supplying all the Bio-Security products for the centre ring.

The exhibitors debenched their Koi and the Koi Dealers packed up ready for the journey home. That’s another Show over and we all look forward to visiting other Koi Shows over the Summer months and The All England Koi Show on 24th and 25th September.

The South East Koi Club would like to thank Liam Bess, the Official Photographer for The All England Young Koi Show who produced a superb photographic record of our Show and has kindly allowed us to use these photos in Koi Net magazine and on the South East Koi Club publicity items and website.

David Brown Chairman