Lindsay aims at 15th gold in 11 years

Akino Lindsay, Jamaica’s poster boy of the International Sport KickBoxing

Association’s Amateur Members Association (ISKA AMA) World Championships, which gets under way November 5-7 in Madrid, Spain, wants more inner-city children exposed to sporting events outside the regular fare of track and field, cricket, netball, and football.

Lindsay, 31, the ISKA AMA’s most decorated fighter, is among five Jamaicans each aiming at double gold at the tournament being held at the Las Olivas Sports Complex in Aranjuez.

Lindsay’s name has become synonymous with the tournament, honoured by ISKA in 2024 for winning eight consecutive individual gold medals, to which he added two double gold in two years, Vienna, Austria, in 2024 and Brisbane, Australia, last year.

Acknowledging the McKay Security Jamaica Taekwondo Association high school programme as providing a wealth of talent, unearthing aces such as himself and Richard Stone, Lindsay pointed to inner-city communities as an untapped pool.

“The high-school programme is being brought back on stream after COVID wiped it out. For us to get back to that level, we not only have to get back into the schools, but there are also boys who were not privileged to attend St George’s College as I did, or Kingston College, like Stone.

“There are certain communities such as Tivoli Gardens, Denham Town, my own community of Waterhouse. We need to go to those communities, take the boys away from crime. That’s what we need to do. Talented people are in the inner-city. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and I are from Waterhouse, but we got opportunities,” Lindsay pointed out, referring to the retired sprinter, an eight-time Olympic medallist and first Caribbean woman to win gold in the Olympic’s marquee 100-metre event.

A towering -90kg fighter, Lindsay has notched five consecutive double gold medals at the ISKA AMA World Championships, facing international fighters from every corner of the globe.

Lindsay won his fifth double gold in Brisbane, Australia, last year, having first landed the individual double on home soil in 2018 at the Montego Bay Convention Centre.

After missing 2019 and the COVID-19 years of 2020 and 2021, Lindsay won double gold medals in Turkey 2022; Munich, Germany, 2023; and Vienna, Austria, in 2024 and Brisbane last year.

Lindsay’s double in Brisbane 2025 moved his ISKA AMA gold medal tally to 13 overall, 12 individual and one team gold won at home in 2018, having first won gold and silver on debut in Portugal 2015, repeating the feat two years later in Greece.

“It’s very difficult to win 13 gold medals, 12 individual, including five double gold,” said Lindsay.

“I give thanks to God, first and foremost, for health. Competing at ISKA for such a long time is not easy. It is very taxing and injury-prone because of the contact-fighting.

“To have remained healthy for so long, it must be the grace of God. In Brisbane, myself, Richard Stone, NIcholas Dusard, and Sharic Bowen all fought Americans in our finals. Americans are among the best points fighters in the world,” Lindsay pointed out.

Renowned for his strength and speed, Lindsay is an iconic figure in ISKA tatami sparring.

“We don’t get recognised in Jamaica that much, so it’s good to know someone will. What the award has done is to give me extra motivation. I aim to get double gold every time,” he said.

Lindsay, coached by Claude Chin and managed by Jason McKay, is a product of the Jamaica Taekwondo Association’s McKay Security High School Taekwondo programme, undergoing early martial arts training at St George’s College and the Jamaica Taekwondo centre before being drafted into the McKay-led Jamaica Combined Martial Arts Team.