Team GB’s Lauren Williams wins taekwondo silver as Jelic takes gold

It feels like it’s been a while since anyone really spoke seriously about the legacy of London 2012. The word was worn to death by the middle of the last decade, when it became clear the Games hadn’t had the effect the bid had promised. But its influence was there to see at the Makuhari Messe Hall on Monday night, where Lauren Williams, 22, from Blackwood in south Wales, won silver for Great Britain in the -67kg division of the taekwondo. Williams first saw the sport when she watched Jade Jones win the gold medal on TV in 2012. Nine years later, she came agonisingly close to winning one herself.

Williams had a three point lead against Matea Jelic, the No 1 seed from Croatia, with 10 seconds left on the clock. And that was as close as she got. Jelic landed a head kick to tie the score, then another to move three points ahead. The fight finished 25-22. Williams, devastated, collapsed motionless on the edge of the mat, while Jelic celebrated. Williams had controlled most of the fight, and had led by five with 20 seconds to go. “It’s not enough, I know it’s not enough,” Williams said afterwards. “I had her with 10 seconds to go, but I messed up, and that’s on me.”

“I knew I was winning, but I didn’t know there was only 10 seconds left.” She said she had lost focus. “I made a mistake and she reacted, and I’ve got to accept that and move on. It was a mental block. It happened on the biggest stage of my career, that’s a hit, but hopefully it will never happen again.”

By then, that first flush of disappointment was starting to fade. “An Olympic silver medal, it’s not bad, is it?” she said, weighing it in her hand. “It’s surprisingly heavy.” Not bad is right, especially since her run-up to the Olympics had been so difficult. She tore her right hamstring three weeks ago, and fought with the injury here. She also arrived late for the pre-Games training camp because her flights were rearranged. “It’s been tough, physically and mentally, over the last few years with all the injuries I’ve had. And the flight was delayed coming out here, so it hasn’t been easy. But there’s no excuse.”

Matea Jelic of Croatia celebrates winning taekwondo gold. Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters

Williams was a kickboxer when she was a kid, and a good one, the world youth champion. Then she happened to catch the last 30 seconds of that Jones 2012 fight on TV. She was on a family caravanning holiday, and they stopped to watch because the sport looked so similar to kick boxing. “My dad turned to me and said: ‘Could you see yourself doing that?’” She said no, because she wasn’t even sure what the sport was, but he signed her up for a trial anyway. Soon she had won a spot on GB Taekwondo’s talent identification programme Fighting Chance, which gives people who play other sports the opportunity to try taekwondo.

Now she and Jones are friends, and training partners. “She’s the reason I’m here, at the end of the day,” Williams said. “I never thought, especially not when I was that girl watching the telly in 2012, that I would be here, on a team with her and all these other amazing athletes.”

Williams was only 14 when she first got selected, so wasn’t old enough to enter the athlete accommodation at the team’s base in Manchester. Instead her mother quit her job, and the two of them lived in a caravan near the site. They stayed there for 18 months. A lot of the members on the GB team will have their own stories just like that. Behind almost every athlete at these Games you will find a parent who made hard sacrifices for their child, which is why it’s so cruel that the closest those family members can get to sharing in these Olympics is a video call. Williams’ parents usually come to all her fights. They flew to Rio in 2016, even though she was only a reserve.

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“I’ve been Face-Timing them all day just to help keep my head level,” Williams said. “It helps to see my mum and dad having a cup of tea at home, it makes it all feel very normal, you know? So I’ve been in contact with them.” Anyway, she had to check, she said, that her dad wasn’t going to pop up unannounced, something he likes to do just to surprise her. “I know they’re enormously proud of what I’ve achieved. Once they found out I’d made the finals, they had people with cameras come to the house so my mum’s been busy making people snacks. Now I just can’t wait to go back and see them.”