The first Australian Olympic Gold medalist and her stolen medal 🏅

3:50:00 AM Tkd kwan 0 Comments

The guest of our article today is a female Taekwondo practitioner from Australia, She was the first athlete from country to win a gold medal in a Taekwondo Olympic competition.

Lauren Chantel Burns was born in Australia June 8, 1974. She belongs to an artistic family, her father is a singer and her mother is a dancer.

As a child Lauren was not practicing in sports, but at the age of 14 she started practicing Taekwondo, and her first encouragement came from her younger bother and father who started Taekwondo before her.

Lauren Burns started competing only two years of practice, and she became a member in the Australia Taekwondo Team.

She trained under three masters including Joon No, Jin Tae Jeong and Martin and Jeanete Hall.

The world Taekwondo championships 1993 held in New York was her first international experience but with no medal, and after two years she also participated at the 1995 World Taekwondo championships held in Philippines and shared the fifth place.

After eight year of practice, Lauren won a bronze medal at the World Cup, an other bronze medal at the world Taekwondo championships 1997 held in Hong Kong (under 51 kg).

In 1999 she won her first international gold medal at the US Taekwondo open Championships.

Her big and historical win was the gold medal she won at the 2000 Summer Olympic games held in Sidney.

Lauren Burns was training 5 to 7 hours a day before the Olympics under her coach Jin Tae Jeong.

She competed in 49 kg division and won her final against the Cuban fighter Urbia Melendez.

After three years from the Olympic Games her medal was stolen and luckily it was recovered few days later :)

Some thieves broke in her house and stole her medal, which was made her very sad and she said that she cried few times because of that robbery that not only stole her Olympic Gold medal but also stole all her efforts and sweat and sacrifice to win that medal.

After few days from the robbery she was lucky to get her medal again by someone who said they found it in a waste bin :)

This is the story of today and see you in the next coming stories :)