The highlight of the 2008 Summer Olympics were the top 3 Men Taekwondo medalists, which are: Guillermo Perez from Mexico, Yulis Gabriel Mercedes from Dominica Republic, and Mu-Yen Chu from Taipei.
The top 3 Women Taekwondo medalists are: Jingyu Wu from China, Buttree Puedpong from Thailand, and Dalia Contreras Rivero from Venezuela.
Conclusively, Sarah Stevenson lastly won a medal in her third Olympics appearance, eliminating two-time gold medalist Chen Zhong in an unprecedented result overturn.
* Host nation (China)There are a large number of Taekwondo practitioners who took the pride of carrying their nation's flag in the ceremony, which are the following: Daba Modibo Keita of Mali, Deepak Bista of Nepal, Sheikha Maitha Al Maktoum of United Arab Emirates, Nesar Ahmad Bahave of Afghanistan, Miguel Ferrera of Honduras & Bineta Diedhiou of Senegal [4] Amongst many controversies in the 2008 Summer Olympics, a terrorist incident was one of them.
On 10 April 2008, China claimed to have disrupted a terror plot to kidnap athletes, journalists, and tourists during the August Olympics in Beijing by Uyghur separatists.
[5] Chinese officials had already turned Beijing into a massive fortress in preparation for any attack: surface-to-air missiles were fired at the skies above the Olympic venues.
[6] On August 23, the quarterfinal match in the Women's +67 kg between Sarah Stevenson of Great Britain and China's Chen Zhong, the defending gold medalist from Sydney and Athens, was plagued with controversy.
Nevertheless, only half of the judges recorded the hit and thus was not registered, dashing Stevenson's Olympic hopes of gaining her the two points that would have secured her a quick victory.
The British team protested for over an hour based on the video footage, it was seen that there was a mishap of the strike to the face, unprecedently in the sport of Taekwondo, much to the crowd's dislike, the judges' decision was repealed.
On announcing the change of result in the quarter-final, the tournament director said: The competition supervisory board has looked into this matter deeply, has made video analysis which has been open to all the referees and judges.
In applying paragraph two of page 64 of the competition rules of the World Taekwondo Federation we have to change this result and we have to declare the British player as the winner.
[9] The bronze medal match in the men's 80+ kg class saw the gold medallist from Sydney 2000, Ángel Matos, against Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov.
[13][14][15] Given alleged poor judging during the Olympics, which left many competitors raging in injustice, the crowd watching the event chanted "Cuba" and applauded Matos and his coach as they were removed from the arena.
"[19] Great Britain's postal service Royal Mail released a stamp in 2010 commemorating taekwondo's inclusion in the London 2012 Olympic Games,[20] and it is debated that the illustration may be based on a widely circulated photo of Ángel Matos kicking referee Chakir Chelbat.
[23] In the wake of the decision, Perez leveled serious charges against the sport's governing body, the World Taekwondo Federation:[23] Charles Robinson, a writer for Yahoo!