Sarah Stephenson
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Women's taekwondo | ||
Representing  Great Britain
|
||
| Olympic Games | ||
 |
2008 Beijing | +67 kg |
| World Championships | ||
 |
2001 Jeju | Middleweight |
|
2011 Gyeongju | Welterweight |
 |
2005 Madrid | Middleweight |
| European Championships | ||
|
1998 Eindhoven | Middleweight |
|
2005 Riga | Middleweight |
|
2006 Bonn | Middleweight |
|
2010 St. Petersburg | Welterweight |
|
2002 Samsun | Middleweight |
|
2004 Lillehammer | Heavyweight |
Sarah Diana Stevenson, MBE (born 30 March 1983) is a British taekwondo athlete.
A world champion in 2001, Stevenson won her country's first ever Olympic medal in taekwondo, a bronze, at the 2008 Games in Beijing, her third Olympic competition for Great Britain. Controversially eliminated before the medal rounds, she was reinstated following appeal and went on to win the bronze medal final.
Stevenson again became world champion in 2011, despite the loss of both her parents to cancer in the preceding year.
Stevenson was selected for her home games in London in 2012, where she took the Olympic oath at the opening ceremony on behalf of all the athletes. Her injury-truncated build up to the Games led to an early elimination; she had taken silver at the Olympic qualifiers despite suffering a broken hand.
In 2013, Stevenson announced her retirement from competition, and her intention to take up a coaching role in the Great Britain team.
Stevenson was born in Doncaster and attended the Don Valley High School in Scawthorpe. She started training taekwondo at the age of 7.
Stevenson started her career by becoming Junior World Champion in 1998. In 2000, she won the 3rd place in taekwondo at the 2000 Summer Olympics's World Qualification Tournament and qualified for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Women's 67 kg. These achievements won her fame and drew the attention of martial arts superstar Jackie Chan who sponsored her while promoting his film Shanghai Noon in the United Kingdom. But in the 2000 Olympics she lost to Norway's Trude Gundersen in the semifinal and Japan's Yoriko Okamoto in the bronze match. The next year, she became a world champion in the 2001 World Taekwondo Championships's Women's Middleweight, defeating 2000 Summer Olympics gold medalist Chen Zhong in the final. She became the first British Taekwondo World champion.
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