#6: The Old Man, Steven Lopez, 37
Lopez won a gold medal in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. Then repeated gold in 2004. 2008 saw him win bronze. No one has beaten time, but in 2008, Lopez won bronze. The 2012 London Olympics saw Lopez competing once again, but he came up short.
Undaunted, Lopez gamely competed again in 2016, falling in the quarter final round. Lopez earned the opportunity to compete from bronze in the repechage bracket, but fell to Tunisia’s Oussama Oueslati in the bronze medal match.
Still, the Taekwondo legend was the oldest man in the entire Olympic event, and deserves tremendous respect.
#5: Jordan’s Ahmad Abughaush wins gold
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has an extraordinary history, with evidence of human inhabitation dating back around 250,000 years. They have a legacy of proud warriors ever since. Present day King Abdullah II of Jordan went to Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, where he was captain of the wrestling team, and New England champion.
But no citizen of Jordan ever won a gold medal in the Olympics, until Rio 2016, when Ahmad Abughaush defeated Russia’s Alexey Denisenko by a score of 10-6, in the men’s Taekwondo 68kg division.
The road to gold was paved hard, as Abughaush knocked out a former champion, and the No. 2 seeded competitor.
#4: Jackie Galloway earns bronze
The Mexican-American is just 20, but was an alternate in the 2012 Summer Olympics, competing for Mexico. This year she competed for the USA in the women’s heavyweight division (67 kg +).
Galloway nearly made it to the gold medal round, but lost in a sudden death round. In the bronze medal match, she beat France’s two-time world champion Gwladys Epangue by 2-1, to become the only US Taekwondo athlete to medal.
#3: Jade Jones goes back to back
Great Britain’s Jade “The Headhunter” Jones is a bonafide Taekwondo superstar. She earned a gold medal in the 2012 Summer Olympics in Rio. And then she did it again in Rio 2016, in even more dominant fashion.
In the round of 16 she beat Naima Bakkal of Morocco by a score of 12-4.
In the quarter finals she beat Belgium’s Raheleh Asemani by 7-2. 5 points was to be as close as any got in the Rio Games.
In the semis, she beat Sweden’s Nikita Glasnovic by 9-4.
And in the finals, Jade Jones beat Spain’s Eva Calvo Gómez by an incredible 16-7.
Jones is just 23, and will be back.
#2. Cheick Sallah Cisse’s great gold medal win
In the most thrilling taekwondo match of the Rio Games, the Ivorian was losing with one second left as he landed a spinning head kick to take the gold medal from Lutalo Muhammad’s grasp.
It was a special moment as this was Ivory Coast’s first ever gold medal. Cisse couldn’t stop running around the arena celebrating after the match.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgTBrt0RLuA
#1: The rise of African Taekwondo
Africa emerged as a new powerhouse in the foot fist way at Rio 2016. Athletes from the continent picked up five medals:
•Cote d’Ivoire’s Cheick Sallah Junior Cisse earned his nation’s first gold medal with the thrilling win above.
•Jordan’s Ahmad Abughaush earned his nation their first Olympic medal, and moved the royal family of Jordan to tears.
•Niger’s Abdoulrazak Issoufou Alfaga’s silver was only the second medal for his nation, and the first since boxer Issaka Dabore earned a bronze in 1972.
•Egypt’s Hedaya Wahba’s bronze was the first in Taekwondo for an Egyptian woman.
•Tunisia’s Oussama Oueslati earned his nation their first Taekwondo medal.
H/T NBC
