Referee stops teenager looking for kicks

One of Britain's youngest Olympians, competing in the newest and most impenetrable sport at the games, came close to adding to the British cascade of gold medals last night.

Sarah Stevenson, 17, the youngest of the 12 entrants in the under-67kg taekwondo, eventually lost out and finished fourth. But before then she knocked out the hotly fancied Chinese competitor, Lumin He, and was leading against the Norwegian, Trude Gundersen. Had she held on to that lead, Stevenson would have been in the final.

Victory would have propelled the Doncaster girl to stardom and with it her obscure specialism. Since she is shy, and taekwondo is bewildering, it is not clear how either would have stood up to the scrutiny. But for a time anyway taekwondo might have made it on to the curriculum for winter nights in our village halls, sandwiched between the badminton and the line dancing. Well, 2004, perhaps.

The eventual winner was Sun-Hee Lee of South Korea, which was wholly appropriate. Taekwondo is a Korean martial art, whose origins date back to the time of Christ. However, it has only become an organised global sport in the past three decades and has absolutely raced into the Olympics. Not for the first time one is left a little bewildered by the IOC's judgment.

Most martial arts have names that translate as something like "the holy way to truth and enlightenment". Taekwondo means "the way of kicking and punching", so no messing there. It is not to be confused with karate, tai-chi or feng shui, which involves re-arranging the furniture. Here, the object is to rearrange your opponent's furniture, by kicking them in the head or by punching or kicking them in the chest.

To score a point, the blow has to have enough momentum to check the opponent; this is not the stylised world of judo in which competitors spend most of their time thinking great thoughts, bowing chivalrously and then getting dressed all over again. In taekwondo they just like to spend their time whacking each other.

In practice whenever the crowd thought points were being scored, they were not. Then, when everyone least expected it, the points came. It was unfathomable.

Since Stevenson's crucial contest was drawn 2-2 on points, it came down to the referee's judgment, and he concluded that Gundersen had been more aggressive. This proved unfathomable even to Gary Sykes, Stevenson's coach. "I thought we'd done just enough," he said. "But the win over Chinese girl had taken a lot out of her. At the end of the day, she's battled well and I'm proud of her."

The crowd were proud of her too. One suspects many of them had requested tickets for the opening ceremony or the track and were sent these as a consolation prize. So they opted for an unusual form of Anglo-Australian solidarity and cheered on Sarah: "Pommie, Pommie, Pommie! Oi! Oi! Oi!"

And through the day their enthusiasm grew as this sombre-looking, upright girl first handed a really good kicking to the Mexican, Monica de Real Jaime, then came from behind to beat Hee before coming to grief against Gundersen.

Taekwondo needs crowd noise to drown out the truly terrifying sounds from the competitors, which, for the most part, are not threatening but resemble the squeals made by a small dog whose leg has been trapped in a car door.

The sport does not appear overwhelmingly safe. Almost every part of the body worth having has to be protected, and it is not easy to see why a parent might want a child to learn such a sport. Either you can be out in the streets getting your head kicked in, or inside doing the same thing. Where's the difference?

But, according to the official guidebook, a taekwondo practitioner "practises the art of self-perfection and understands the techniques in pursuit of the virtue of human life". Students learns respect for "instructors, senior students, classmates and themselves". In my youth, an ancient western martial art was practised in order to instill this into students. It was called corporal punishment.

Stevenson followed her brother into taekwondo. Then, in the irritating way of little sisters, she outshone him. "The great thing is that it is more of a sport than a martial art," she says. "I really love the power of the kicks."

The film star Jackie Chan reputedly loved it too and was rumoured to be on the brink of pouring money into the sport. That remains just a rumour. But imagine if the sport did get rich. We could all practise self-perfection and kick the living daylights out of each other. The gods on Olympus probably did nothing else all day.