Just over a year ago in Azerbaijan, Australian taekwondo practitioner Leon Sejranovic broke a long-standing drought that sent the close-knit taekwondo community into raptures.
By winning bronze in the 74kg division at the Taekwondo World Championships, Leon claimed Australia’s first medal at the Championships in a decade, and the first by a male athlete in more than two decades.
So long had it been since Australia medalled at the Taekwondo World Championships, Leon wasn’t aware how long the drought existed.
“I knew we had won World Championship medals before, but I didn't know exactly how long ago,” he says.
“I found that out later. It's a cool thing to be able to claim.”
The bronze medal in Azerbaijan motivated Leon to win gold at the prestigious Korean Open only two months later.
Both medals put him firmly on the radar to break another long-standing Australian taekwondo drought and become the first Australian Olympic medallist in the sport since Sydney 2000.
The debut of taekwondo at the Olympics in Sydney was a successful one for the host nation, with Lauren Burns claiming gold in the women’s 49kg division and Daniel Trenton taking silver in the men’s 80+ kg division.
Leon grew up watching footage of Trenton’s Olympic performance and it inspired his passion for the sport and his dream of making the Olympics.
Despite not making the team for the Tokyo Games, he has no regrets.
“I'd rather dream big and come up short then undersell myself and not aspire to do something great,” he says.
“I wanted to qualify for Tokyo but it was a very big mountain to climb. I was young. There were other people that were ranked much higher than me. It was a very ambitious dream. I thought why not give it a crack. It didn't work out.”
Three years later it has ‘worked out’, and Leon will make his Olympic debut at the Grand Palais in the 80kg division. This has required him to put on weight in order to meet the criteria given his usual 74kg division isn’t represented at the Olympics.
And while an Olympic medal would be a massive personal achievement for Leon, his goal is to bring greater awareness of the sport he loves to Australians.
“If we can win a medal it boosts the viewership of our sport and hopefully it would lead to more funding towards taekwondo,” he says.
“There's so much potential. There's so many talented fighters. If we have support, we can do big things.”
The men’s 80kg division will compete at the Grand Palais on 9 August from 5.10pm (AEST).
This article was originally written for The Australian Olympic Team. You can read the published version here
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