Stevenson a kick short of medal glory
The space left on the wall of the bar at the Doncaster Dome for Sarah Stevenson’s Olympic medal will remain bare - but it would be a brave man who filled it before Athens 2004 after the display put on by the youngest taekwondo fighter at the Games in Sydney.
Doncaster’s other women’s sporting success, the Belles football team, would have been proud of the 17-year-old’s fancy footwork today as she came within a judge’s dubious decision of fighting for the title and then missed the bronze by a kick. The crown went appropriately to Sun-Hee Lee, whose Korean ancestors invented the martial art that means “way of kicking and punching” more than 2,000 years ago.
Stevenson came away with nothing to hang around her neck but with dignity and pride intact. With her parents Roy and Diana watching in the stands, flags in hands, stomachs churning, the world and European junior champion stepped up to the senior stage on the biggest of occasions and saw off four of the world’s top eight players on her way to a place of respect: fourth, among the elite of her sport.
In the morning Stevenson had put points on the board almost faster than she could say Monica Deyhanira del Real Jaime, the 26-year-old Mexican whom she beat 8-4 in her first clash. Next up was a challenge straight from the book of coincidences. Just before heading out to Sydney, Stevenson had won the backing of Jackie Chan when the kung fu master’s agent had read about the financial plight of her family in The Times.
Chan’s film Shanghai Noon was released the day after Stevenson gave a demonstration of her skills for him in London and is helping to raise funds for the fighter. Today, it was high noon for the girl from Shanghai, however, as the British champion in a 6-5 triumph kicked one of the favourites out of contention for the gold medal.
So shocked were the Chinese fighter and coach that they refused all interview requests. Stevenson is likely to have that kind of impact on her sport for some years to come. The crowd certainly warmed to her, and, in the absence of an Australian, even belted out the odd chorus of pommie, pommie, pommie, oi, oi, oi! as the teenager challenged 23-year-old Trude Gundersen, of Norway, for a place in the final.
The bout was a stand-off test of wills in which the tribal squawks that the competitors emit reflect the nature of a sport in which threat is nine-tenths of the battle. With 20 seconds remaining, the Norwegian levelled the score at 2-2. It seemed though that Stevenson had done enough but the rushes of adrenalin that her sport demands had left her shattered in the way a bar brawler might feel that way of a Friday night.
Stevenson’s head bowed, and Gary Sykes, her coach, waiting patiently at the side, their demonstration of polite English reserve seemed out of kilter with their sport. It certainly clashed with the air-punching of the Norwegians, who rallied the judge's support by sticking two fingers up at him to gesture their belief that Gundersen had been superior in two of the three rounds.
The sequence of scores, let alone the warning the Norwegian had received, indicated otherwise, and when the judge hailed Stevenson’s rival the victor, the British fighter fought hard to hold back the tears.
Sykes, who has built Doncaster into a taekwondo town of 2,000 participants in the past 25 years, explained how he had had to turn his charge around: “We had words about how she’d thrown it away. Then we drew a line and I said, 'now get yourself together - you’re still in there fighting for a medal'.”
When Stevenson - who followed her brother Simon into the sport at seven - came out to fight experienced 31-year-old Kirsimarja Koskinen, a Finn with several senior international medals under her belt, her steely glare and the determined posture told the tale of a girl who had dragged herself back from the brink of despair to a place of confidence and self-belief. It resulted in a 7-4 victory.
Within half an hour, Stevenson was back out to face 29-year-old multimedal-winner, Yoriko Okamoto, of Japan, a nation where taekwondo is somewhat more established than it is in Britain. With 20 seconds remaining of the kick-for-kick bout, Okamoto placed the killer kick which left Stevenson no time to change the result from 6-5.
A tearful Stevenson, who had taken a year off school to train for Sydney, said: “I’m disappointed because I really wanted a medal but that was my best senior performance ever. Now I’m going out to have a party... I might even get drunk,” said the teenager whose parents have sacrificed so much to get their daughter to Sydney.
In Australia, they are staying with “Uncle Sid”, a relative they have not seen in 40 years. “She’s brought the family back together through sport,” said Roy of his daughter. There has been most-welcome help from the British Olympic Association this year, but when the Stevensons get back to autumnal Britain after the warmth of their Australian experience, the car boot sales at Stainforth Market and Oldcoates beckon. For they funded Stevenson’s passage to one kick short of an Olympic medal.
Roy, who works as a rope capper, said: “Oh yes, I should think we’ll be back doing the car boot sales. We didn’t think the judging was right but Sarah’s done herself and us proud today. Who’d have thought a girl from Doncaster would be in the Olympics taekwondo.” Stevenson herself did and says she intends to be back - “for the gold” - next time.
CRAIG LORD
The Times
