Sarah Stevenson – Favourite Things
Sarah Stevenson MBE is a British Taekwondo athlete. In 2001 and 2011 she won the World Taekwondo Championships, making her the first-ever British Taekwondo World champion. In 2008, she broke records again by winning Britain’s first-ever taekwondo medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing. In 2012, she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to martial arts and retired from the sport a year later, taking up a coaching role instead. After a six-year coaching tenure, Sarah Stevenson became President of British Taekwondo and currently sits on the board.
Family Time
I have two kids, one is six and one is five. Life gets so busy and my husband works away a lot as one of the coaches for the Taekwondo Olympic team. It is hard to find quality time for the kids when you are juggling working and the rat race of school runs and mealtimes. When both of us are in the country together, it’s really important to me that we make time and plans to do something as a family and focus on being present.
I’ve just been running around looking for an Iron Man costume for World Book Day and I’m thinking, this is what I have become — no travelling the world, competing for medals or Olympic dreams; you have to come right back to earth because your kids just do not care about that, they just want their iron man costume.
Walking
Everyone did a lot of walking in lockdown. When I was walking I could finally embrace what is going on and feel grateful for what I have, because although there was so much heartbreak in the world, for our family, there were also positives in how much family time we were getting. My walks helped me reflect and realise that. Now, I try to do at least one or two walks a week, even short ones. Obviously, I am meant to be quite fit but I remember going on my first walk in lockdown and I had to call my husband to pick me up. My feet were killing me, I was stumbling over and was knackered. I had only walked 3 or 4 miles, thankfully, now I can manage more than that.
Coffee
I don’t think I drink a lot of coffee, but if you asked my husband he would probably say I do. I go to a coffee shop almost every day and get a nice high quality flat white. I’m a coffee snob; I’ll send my order back if it isn’t good and if I know somewhere doesn’t do good coffee, I won’t go there for breakfast. When my kids are a bit older I want to get really into making coffee at home with my Nespresso machine and grind the beans myself. These are my dreams now; Olympic medals to a proper barista machine.
Scars
I have had a lot of surgeries as Taekwondo is a contact sport. I’ve had two major knee surgeries, hip surgery and have pins in my ankles and a plate in my hand; I’m covered in scars, but I would never change that. When you are a full-time athlete one of the worst things that can happen to you is getting injured and having to stop competing. I overcame my injuries and went on to win major championships because of the mental and physical strength I gained from working through rehab.
I have never felt the need to cover up my scars either. I grew up doing a sport that was never promoted to girls and that not many girls did. I don’t want my daughter to ever feel like she should be ashamed of what she wants to do, so the more outspoken I am about my scars, the more we can show girls that it is alright to have scars and be sporty. I am alive and healthy and I have done some amazing things; you don’t do that without getting some mental or physical scars.
Medals and MBE
I won an Olympic medal which was incredible because it was the first medal British Taekwondo had ever won for Great Britain. The team has done incredibly since then, but I am really proud of being the trailblazer. It is really hard for me to say what I am most proud of because they all mean so much in different ways but it is mad for me to think I received an MBE at 28. I never imagined someone like me would get an achievement like that, being thanked by the Queen for what I have done for Team GB. I don’t know anyone from Doncaster who reached that level of achievement or honours at such a young age, so it feels like a nice thing to give back to my community. I never thought I would get this far, the area I was from and the lack of opportunities for people like me, so it is incredible to be able to say to people; I did that and I never believed I could – but you can too.
Enjoyed Sarah Stevenson’s favourites? Explore last week’s Favourite Things here.