Goulding's conveyor belt of champions
4:53pm Wednesday 25th August 2010 in Other By Gordon Sharrock
MARTIAL arts fanatic Jamie Goulding has coached scores of champions since launching his own gym 15 years ago.
In that time his business has grown from humble beginnings in a small room over a Bolton town centre hairdressers to a thriving academy in his native Farnworth, which has been awarded UK Centre of Excellence status.
But, for all his success on the commercial front, the 32-year-old is still a competitor at heart and is currently in training for his first professional cage fight.
Details of the date and the opponent have still to be finalised but Goulding has no qualms about making his debut in one of the most brutal of sports, even though he knows his reputation means he could be in for a tough baptism.
“Fighting is just fun for me,” he said. “I’ve been a champion at karate, a champion at kick-boxing and now I want to win a title at mixed martial arts.
“Obviously there’s going to be a lot more pressure on me because I’ve got the centre of excellence. I’m going to be everybody’s target.
“But I don’t worry about it. If I win, I win, if I lose . . . so what? I might even get hurt but I’ve been hurt before and have the scar tissue to show for it.”
Goulding has enjoyed a meteoric rise inside and outside the ring since his father encouraged him to start karate classes as a six-year-old.
“I started back in 1984 when my dad passed his driving test and announced to the family that we weren’t staying in every night,” he recalled.
“So we picked karate and started as a family – my dad Jim, mum Viv, and sister Sally.
“My mum and sister dropped off but me and my dad carried on and a year later I entered my first championships and did really well. I finished second and won the best figher of the day award.
“After that I started competing regularly. I became a British champion 16 times, won the European championship twice, was kick-boxing world champion between 2002-04 and World Cup champion at frestyle kick-boxing in 2009.”
Coached by the highly-respected instructor Joe Tierney, who also employed him as manager of his martial arts supplies shop, Goulding eventually branched out on his own in 1995 when he rented a room over a hairdressing salon in Bolton’s Bradshawgate and began training champions of his own.
He went on to run classes at Sutton Community Centre, Deane and opened gyms at Halliwell, Farnworth and Salford, setting up a production line that initially delivered a host of British and European junior champions and a girls’ world junior champion and which now boasts senior national and world champions in a variety of categories.
“Working for Joe for 15 years I taught small classes to begin with but ended up doing so much coaching that I could no longer commit enough days to the shop,” Golding explained.
“So I ended up going full time with my own martial arts academy. When I opened the premises in Farnworth last year I closed the other satellite gyms but I still run the classes at the Sutton Community Centre out of loyalty to the students there.
“That’s a labour love for me but the main focus in on the centre of excellence, where we run a range of programmes for all ages and abilities, competitive and non-competitive.
“It’s a six-day-a-week operation. I go training myself on Sundays. I’ve got to keep in shape for my next fight.”
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