Sarah Stevenson

Sarah Diana Stevenson is a former British taekwondo athlete who achieved prominence as her country's first world champion in the sport and the winner of Great Britain's first Olympic medal in taekwondo. Born on 30 March 1983, she represented her nation at four consecutive Olympic Games between 2000 and 2012. Over the course of her competitive career, she secured multiple world, European, and international titles before transitioning into a coaching role.

Stevenson was raised in Doncaster, where she attended Don Valley High School in Scawthorpe. She began her training in taekwondo at seven years of age. She developed under the instruction of Master Gary Sykes, training at Sportcity in Manchester and joining the Allstars Taekwondo Academy in Doncaster. Her early success included winning a gold medal at the European Championships and becoming the Junior World Champion in 1998.

In 2000, Stevenson placed third at the Olympic Qualification Tournament, securing a berth for the 2000 Summer Olympics in the Women's 67 kg division. Her achievements drew sponsorship from martial arts actor Jackie Chan during his promotional tour for the film Shanghai Noon in the United Kingdom. At the Sydney Games, she reached the semifinals, ultimately finishing fourth after matches against Norway's Trude Gundersen and Japan's Yoriko Okamoto. The following year, she defeated 2000 Olympic champion Chen Zhong to win the gold medal at the 2001 World Taekwondo Championships in the Women's Middleweight category, becoming Great Britain's first taekwondo world champion. She later contested the 2004 Summer Olympics, where she was eliminated in the first round.

Throughout the mid-2000s, Stevenson accumulated several notable titles, including gold medals at the European Championships in 2004 and 2005, a silver medal at the 2005 World Championships, and a gold medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Taekwondo Championships. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, she competed in the bronze-medal winning campaign. Following a quarterfinal match against Chen Zhong in which judges initially failed to score a high kick, an official protest by the British team resulted in a video review that overturned the initial decision, advancing Stevenson to the semifinals. Despite sustaining an ankle injury during a semifinal loss to María del Rosario Espinoza, Stevenson defeated Noha Abd Rabo in the repechage to secure Britain's first Olympic medal in taekwondo. The scoring controversy surrounding her quarterfinal match prompted wider discussions regarding the implementation of electronic scoring body protectors in the sport.

Stevenson continued her international success by winning gold at the 2009 British Open International and the 2010 European Championships. In 2011, she claimed her second World Taekwondo Championship gold medal, competing shortly after both of her parents died of cancer. Prior to the 2012 Summer Olympics, she earned silver at the Olympic qualifiers while competing with a broken hand. At the London Games, Stevenson took the Olympic oath on behalf of all competitors during the opening ceremony, though an injury-affected preparation led to an early elimination against Paige McPherson.

In 2013, Stevenson announced her retirement from active competition to join the Great Britain national team in a coaching capacity. Her contributions to martial arts were formally recognized when she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 New Year Honours. In January 2014, she was further honored by being named a Freeman of her hometown of Doncaster.