From Regional Gold to National Gold

Following their success in the 2009 regional competition K&R Employees Guy Brooks and Michael Ashton recently attended the National competition where they competed against the best under 23 year old trades people in Australia. In an outstanding effort and after some extensive training both of these fine young men produced "Gold Medal" performances in winning their respective categories. Their success follows in the footsteps of the 2008 competitions' National "Gold Medalist" Shane Ashton. Such an outstanding performance from our employees only confirms K&R's commitment to training and the caliber of tradesman placed in mentor roles. In winning the Welding category Guy became the 1st Illawarra "Gold Medalist" since 1985 and his winning margin was 4 full marks clear of second place. After a bad day one the result is even more outstanding for Guy and his remarkable composure and self confidence along with the long training hours in the lead up to competition paid the ultimate dividend. Michael had the advantage of having seen his brother Shane compete and even though he lost 6 weeks training time through the unfortunate need of eye surgery he went in to the competition very confident. Once the nerves subsided he even found time for interviews and the end result was an unprecedented 93/100 and 11 marks clear of second place. In the same category the second placed competitor from West Sydney also was invited to train alongside Michael at K&R's workshop for 2 full days leading into the competition. He was extremely grateful and went out of his way to thank Shane, Michael and Ray for the help stating that he could not have done it without the help of K&R. With the Australian Team yet to be named hopes are high that we will have produced two more "Skillaroos" to take on the worlds' best in London October 2011. The management and staff of K&R would like to offer our congratulations to Michael and Guy and thank both of these fine young men for helping to raise the awareness of our dedication and commitment to training the future of Illawarras' tradesmen. Their manner in competition and pride shown wearing the K&R emblem was a credit to them both and a credit to the company.