Kumho Tyre’s Tastes Success as Official Partner of GB Taekwondo

Kumho Tyre’s Tastes Success as Official Partner of GB Taekwondo Team

In July Kumho Tyre UK (KTUK) announced that it had become an official partner of GB Taekwondo.

Fresh from its best ever medal haul at the European Championships in May, GB Tae­kwondo was ranked as one of Britain’s best medal hopes for the Olympic Games and Kumho’s involvement provided a time­ly boost to the team as it began its final preparations for London 2012. Gary Hall, Performance Director at GB Taekwondo, said at the time: “The backing of such a strong global brand will not only help us put the finishing touches to our 2012 planning, but support our aims for the wider development of the sport in the UK. We share a common goal in seeking maximum perfor­mance and there are some fantastic opportunities to achieve this with Kumho Tyres in both the short and long term.”

In the event, GB Taekwondo excelled itself at the Olympics with a gold medal for the diminutive Welsh teen­ager Jade Jones, and a bronze for Lutalo Muhammad ? by far the country’s best overall performance since Taekwondo first joined the Olympic schedule in 2000.

The 19 year-old Jones’ achievement made her Britain’s first ever Olympic taekwondo champion: she was also the youngest of all Team GB’s 29 gold medallists.

Such success certainly assured the ‘Head Hunter’ of a rapturous welcome in her home town of Flint, where not only has her local post box been painted gold, but the butcher’s shop where her mother works is celebrating with the production of special ‘Olympic’ sausages.

The bronze medal secured by the unassuming ‘Walthamstow Warrior’ Muhammad was Britain’s first ever Olympic gong in the men’s weight divisions. It was a sterling result for the 21 year-old Londoner who had to fight off a quarter-final defeat and through two repechage events to earn his place on the podium.

Kumho was naturally thrilled with the outcome. Said KTUK’s Marketing Director John Thrupp: “It is an honour to be associated with such international sporting success. The relationship was a natural one bearing in mind Kumho is a Korean company and taekwondo is the national sport of South Korea. However, we didn’t expect such meteoric results so soon. The team’s unforgettable performance was a superb advert for their sport and will no doubt encourage many more to practise the popular martial art in this country.”

Taekwondo loosely translates as ‘the way of the hand and the foot’. Britain is now regarded as one of the world’s top Taekwondo nations, with some 600 clubs supporting 100,000 practitioners.

No less than 17 Brit­ish athletes comprise the ‘World Class Performance Programme’. They are drawn from all over the country and are trained at the sport’s national headquarters in Manchester.y have done for me. Once I am fully recov­ered, I will dedicate myself to the development of the Company.”