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On Aug. 18, in Rio de Janeiro's Carioca Arena 3, Ahmad Abughaush made sportive history. After a sizzling final bout against Russia's Alexey Denisenko, the fighter became the first Jordanian athlete to win an Olympic medal, in any discipline, at any Olympics, ever. The same evening, Iranian Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin became the first female Iranian athlete to achieve that same feat.
The sport which delivered these two inspirational moments was taekwondo. Rio was a triumph for the Korean combat sport, and if historians of the future ever write its history, it seems likely that 2016 will mark taekwondo's coming of age.
Things could have been very different. Just eight years previously, Beijing 2008 had been a disaster. Then, taekwondo was marred by dubious judging, coach protests, results being overturned, a referee being assaulted and a dominant Team Korea capturing four of eight gold medals on offer. Speculation was rampant that taekwondo would be pulled from the Olympics.
In the wake of this PR catastrophe, the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) rose to the challenge. Taking advice from, among other parties, the BBC, they instituted a range of reforms to upgrade the sport's fairness and transparency. Electronic impact sensors were embedded in the body protector to obviate human error in judgments, and instant video replays were instituted to double-check controversial points. The reforms debuted at the London 2012 Olympics.
Taekwondo in London was hailed as a triumph. Rio made clear that these reforms were no fluke. (Full disclosure: I covered Rio taekwondo on behalf of the WTF. They did not, however, request this article, which was independently written.) And taekwondo is not static: Further changes had been instituted since 2012.
Rio saw the Olympic advent of octagonal mats, which force athletes to use more footwork and peripheral vision. Adding a splash of color, national designs were added to uniform pants. Electronic impact sensors were included in the head as well as the body protectors, and more points were awarded for the crowd-pleasing high and spinning kicks.
Result? No protests, no disputes. And the crowd loved the action, with the noise in Carioca 3 being more reminiscent of a Premier League Football match than an Olympic event.
Team Korea had an excellent outing. Five athletes competed and each went home with a medal (two golds, three bronzes), putting the country at the top of taekwondo's medal table. However, taekwondo is no longer a "gold factory" for Korea, and the victory of Korean athletes is no longer a foregone conclusion.
Indeed, under the WTF leadership, elements of Korean nationalism, formerly a prominent feature of taekwondo, have evaporated. Last year, the WTF sponsored an academic forum during which historians delivered findings proving that the sport's ancestry lay, not in ancient Korean martial arts of Silla and Goguryeo, as had long been claimed, but in Japanese karate in the 1940s. This kind of disclosure proves that the sport's leadership has an open, international mindset.
Of course, Olympic taekwondo was not perfect. The adoption of electronic sensors has changed the game, with some fighters now using a front-leg-only, foot-jabbing style of combat, rather than the jumping, spinning kicks which are taekwondo's forte. (This was particularly the case in the heavyweight finals.) And in a number of cases, the PSS did not register what looked like valid hits.
But the WTF knows about these problems, and have shown their willingness to make changes to upgrade the game. It seems likely that these will be dealt with before the next Olympics, in Tokyo 2020.
Another issue is the small number of medals: Taekwondo has just eight weight categories (compared to boxing's 13 and judo's 14). Surely, the time has come for Olympic authorities to increase this.
Tokyo 2020, incidentally, will feature the Olympic advent of taekwondo's great rival, Japanese karate. Years ago, this would almost certainly have horrified the sport's top authorities. No longer. A senior WTF official, speaking to global media in Rio, welcomed the development, seeing it as worthy competition rather than a threat.
Taekwondo is one of only two Olympic events with Asian ancestry ― the other being Japan's judo. It is practiced in 206 countries. Under WTF auspices, it is being deployed in refugee camps, offering children there the chance to learn an all-in-one exercise, sport, self-defense system and mental discipline, thereby gaining self-confidence and self-respect.
The conventional wisdom is that Korea's exports ― semiconductors, consumer electronics, cars, petrochemicals and pop culture ― are its main contributions to international society. I would argue that Korea's greatest gift to the world is taekwondo.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.
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