The then 21-year-old, who also won in this weight division at the Championships held two years earlier in Istanbul, secured a second gold with a 13-8 defeat of Chinese Taipei's Xiang Wen.

Despite losing the final, Wen returned home with the satisfaction of inflicting the biggest upset of the day by beating Turkey's world number one Ali Can Ozcan in the semi-finals, 31-18.

A thrilled Yasur later told World Para Taekwondo: "It was a difficult final. It was the last fight of the day after four matches. I am a second title world champion, I have no words. 

"It's such a wonderful feeling. I love it.

"It's everything that I wanted and everything that I am training for.

"Of course, the next goal and big one is the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

"I will try my best to repeat this day in Paralympics, it's a big dream for me and I will do everything to achieve the gold medal."

Although Yasur didn't qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, where taekwondo made its debut, he indicated later in the year that he was a Paralympic contender for the future.

Yasur won five fights at the 2021 World Para Taekwondo Championships in Turkey, beating the European champion in the semi-finals and defeating home athlete Ozcan 57-42 in the final.

"I still haven't absorbed it," Yasur told the Times of Israel after his victory. 

"I am happy, and I am the happiest person for the path I chose, for the medal, and for this crazy day."

Other crazy days lay ahead for the young man who lost both his arms below the elbow as a 13-year-old after accidentally grabbing hold of a live cable while retrieving a football from an electrical installation near his home in northern Israel.

In the years that followed he was determined to embrace a sport that required only the use of his legs, deciding on the Korean martial art of taekwondo because of its focus on legwork.

After his story was covered by the media, members of the public raised donations for him to be fitted with two prosthetic bionic arms that he controls through brain signals.

Yasur is contributing to a rising interest in taekwondo in Israel, for whom Avishag Semberg won Olympic bronze in Tokyo in the women's flyweight under-49kg category.

Speaking after Yasur's first world title win, Israel's Culture and Sports Minister Chili Tropper described him as "a wonderful young man for whom the sky is the limit".

Yasur is continuing to prove the truth of that assessment.

Vietnam-born Kong, who moved to France aged three, lost both hands aged 18 when a homemade bomb exploded while he was holding it.

Then a boxer, he switched to taekwondo as he hoped a martial arts philosophy would help him cope.

"When I was a child I watched a lot of films of Jackie Chan, Jean Claude Van Damme and of course Bruce Lee," he said in 2018. “Martial arts develops your self-esteem." 

Kong's self-esteem received another boost in November 2022 when he was offered a sponsorship deal with beauty and cosmetics giant L'Oreal.

The agreement, which will cover Paris 2024, by which time Kong will be 43, is part of L'Oreal's "commitment to diversity", the company has claimed.

"I would like to thank the whole team," said Kong. "Alone we move forward, but together we go further."

Kong has won four world titles, most recently in 2019, but lost a bronze medal contest in the men's 61 kilograms class at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, where Para-taekwondo made its debut.

At the peak of his powers in 2018, he did not lose a fight and won six international tournaments.

Kong is also a two-time European champion and was a winner at the IWAS World Games.

At the start of his annus mirabilis of 2018 Kong had already won three world titles in the under-61 kilograms K43 division.

"My goal in 2018 is to win every tournament I compete in," he told World Taekwondo at the time. "And I want to compete in them all."

This is exactly what he did - the highlight being a 29-22 victory over rising Japanese talent Kenta Awatari to claim the Pan American Championships title.

Speaking before the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, Kong commented: "The one that wins is the best of the best.

"This achievement is my dream - to be the best in the world."

During the pandemic, Kong was among a group of the world's leading Para-taekwondo athletes who demonstrated how they coped with the restrictive measures put in place due to cornoavirus.

His video was the first of World Taekwondo's online "Kicking It At Home" campaign and included footage of Kong at home. 

It was a huge mark of the way Lopez has established himself within his field that he was chosen last November to be a flag bearer for his nation at the Opening Ceremony of the home World Taekwondo Championships in Guadalajara.

"I felt very happy to be part of the Opening Ceremony, to show my support for such an important event and for the whole Mexican team," Diego Garcia told World Taekwondo.

"It was very emotional when we came out with the flag, I had goosebumps as we

enjoyed the celebration of Mexican culture and everyone cheering our names."

Some 6,000 fans packed out the stadium to welcome all the fighters from across the world and sang the Mexican national anthem with great power.

"It was just an amazing feeling to listen to the Mexican national anthem here at home, but it’s also so nice to listen to the anthem on the other side of the world!" Lopez said.

"And I hope it will be playing again as I aim to win gold at Paris 2024."

The 2024 Paralympics will be shared globally on TV for the first time after the sport's highly successful debut at Tokyo 2020.

Without pandemic restrictions, Paris 2024 should be the first chance for the whole Lopez family to share the moment.

"I am fully focussed on qualifying directly for Paris 2024 and staying number one in the rankings," he said.

"I want to hear the anthem played again - this time with my family - and we will do everything possible to be together."

Family is a major motivation for Lopez who sees their support as central to his success, likewise the guidance of his coach Janet Alegria, and the two took the opportunity to study a few of the Olympic champions in Mexico.

Diego Garcia explained, "We have seen many top fighters here and there are some useful techniques that we will implement in our training to keep innovating.

"In 2023 we have the World Championships, the Grand Prix and the Para Pan American Games, so we must always seek out new ways and techniques to improve."

He stepped onto that path at the age of 14, and sees his success as a way to clear the way for others.

"This really motivates me and pushes me to do better in order to give a good example of how things should be done," he said.

"I feel really happy that there are people, and many kids, that are getting into Para taekwondo."

Significant progress has been made this year to fully incorporate Para taekwondo into the World Taekwondo calendar. Diego Garcia approves.

"This equality makes me very happy since the federation is being inclusive and Paralympic and Olympic athletes are being treated the same," he said.

The memories are still fresh of that night in the Makuhari Messe Hall at Tokyo 2020 when the 18-year-old celebrated extravagantly by spreading the Mexican flag across the mat where he had just defeated Iran's Mahdi Pourrahnama, 26-20 in the men's K44 under-75 kilograms final.

Lopez's victory took the Mexican Paralympic gold medal total to seven - one more than the country had achieved at London 2012.

An article on tecreview.tec.mx, written by Elizabeth Ruiz, details how he began in taekwondo at the age of five and joined the Mexican team at the National Center for the Development of Sports Talents and High Performance at the age of 14.

Two years later, he became senior world champion in Antalya, becoming the first Mexican to do so.

Later in 2019, he compounded his impact upon the sport when he took gold at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games.

At the age of 17, he was the winner of the 2020 National Sports Award in the Paralympic category.

With Para-taekwondo due to make its debut at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Paralympics in 2021, the highest peak lay before the youngster.

He climbed it. Now he wants to wave the Mexican flag there once again…

Naimova's achievement in the women's K44 over-58 kilograms division in Tokyo was all the greater for including victories against her two main rivals - Britain's 2017 world champion Amy Truesdale and Debora Menezes of Brazil.

The Uzbek athlete looked ready to succeed Truesdale as world champion at the 2019 World Championships in the Turkish city of Antalya but lost 7-3 in the final to Menezes, who thus claimed a first global Para-taekwondo title for her country.

Later that year, Naimova's ambition was thwarted once again as she had to settle for bronze at the Asian Para Open Taekwondo Championships in Amman, with Truesdale claiming gold.

But her semi-final meeting with the Briton in the heavyweight category at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics saw her progress with a startling 60-14 scoreline. 

Awaiting her in the final on the last day of competition in the Makuhari Messe Hall B was Menezes, who had earned a similarly emphatic result in her semi-final, beating Ukraine's Yuliya Lypetska 55-10.

It took 40 seconds before either finalist landed a score, with Naimova first on the board after knocking Menezes to the floor with a kick to the body.

Menezes, 13 years older than her opponent, was then penalised twice as Naimova moved into a 4-0 lead at the end of the first round.

The Brazilian responded with a turning kick to the body to close the gap to 4-3, only for Naimova to land another blow to ensure a three-point cushion going into the final round.

Naimova managed to keep Menezes at bay in the first minute of the third round, before scoring with a kick to the body to move 8-3 ahead.

The Uzbek fighter was penalised and almost got caught with a kick to the head late on, but managed to hold on to win 8-4.

Five months after that Tokyo flourish, Naimova produced another in Istanbul as she earned her first world title after earning a narrow victory over her rival Truesdale in the final.

Truesdale had reached that match the hard way via a semi-final against the woman who had succeeded her as world champion in 2019, Menezes, and it was not until the final minute that Naimova found the way to take gold.

"I'm in shock," Naimova told World Para Taekwondo after her win. "The excitement is higher at the Worlds than at the Paralympic Games because of the pressure.

"No-one expected me to win at Tokyo 2020, but here I was the target."

Bozteke earned under-61 kilograms bronze at the Tokyo Paralympics with a 14-2 win over Italy’s Antonino Bossolo, who lost his semi-final to the eventual gold medallist, Nathan Torquato of Brazil.

In the previous round, the Turkish athlete produced one of the most arresting victories of the debut Paralympic event by beating Mongolia’s four-time world champion and world number one Bolor-Erdene Ganbat 23-22 in a tense and thrilling encounter.

Weeks after creating one of the Paralympic Games’ most memorable moments, Bozteke won a second straight European gold by beating Russia’s Evgenii Alifirenko 12-6 in his new category of the under-63 kg final.

It has been an outstanding year for the 24-year-old from Sanliurfa, who took up Para taekwondo as part of his recuperation from a traumatic accident suffered when he was 11 when he lost both hands after his arms were caught in the tail shaft of a tractor while he was working in a pistachio tree garden.

His arms were partially reconstructed in the course of 15 operations, and he was bedridden for a year.

The European Championships were where he made his international breakthrough at Warsaw in 2016 as he won bronze in the under-61kg category and added silver at the same weight in Plovdiv two years later.

He also took world silver in 2017, and world bronze two years later.

At 24, Bozteke has years of medal-winning ahead of him…

Gjessing earned the women's K44 under-58 kilograms title at the Makuhari Messe Hall B in Chiba, with a 32-14 win in the final over Britain’s Beth Munro, who had earlier beaten China's 2019 world champion Li Yujie in the last four.

The Danish athlete reached the final with a thrilling 8-6 victory over Brazil's Silvana Fernandes.

Following her historic victory in what was the first Paralympic taekwondo competition, World Taekwondo President Chungwon Choue met with Gjessing in Tokyo.

Choue congratulated her and discussed her plans for the future now she has won it all.

Gjessing lived up to her billing as one of Denmark's big medal hopes at the Paralympic Games, in which she took part as the world number one ranked player.

In March 2021, Danish broadcaster DR named Gjessing among seven athletes it tipped for a medal.

She had also been identified as "one to watch" by the International Paralympic Committee.

With that amount of pressure it was just as well that Gjessing had years of experience behind her at the top level.

"I am especially looking forward to feeling the atmosphere that the whole world unites around one thing, namely sports," she said before the Paralympic competition began.

Born in 1978, Gjessing is one of the older athletes on the circuit, but what she lacks in youth she more than makes up for in experience.

Gjessing was a member of Denmark's able-bodied taekwondo team and competed at the 2001 and 2003 World Championships, before being diagnosed in 2007 with chondrosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

She underwent different treatments before her lower left arm was amputated in 2012.

At this crucial point in her life, Gjessing got in touch with her former coach, Bjarne Johansen, who spoke to her about Para-taekwondo.

She got back into training and was soon practicing alongside elite athletes at Johansen's training centre, in preparation for the World Para Taekwondo Championships in Lausanne in 2013.

She duly took the title in the under-58kg category, setting off on a long unbeaten run which only ended in 2019.

During that sequence of success she retained her world title in 2014, 2015 and 2017. The latter achievement - in an event staged at London 2012 Olympic venue the Copper Box Arena - was watched by her two daughters.

"I saw them in the stand during my first match and I started crying but thought 'no, you can't cry now!" said Gjessing to the IPC.

"When I went to the mat in the final I also felt like crying but told myself 'you can't be emotional now.'"

At the 2019 World Championships in Antalya, Turkey, however, she had to settle for bronze in an event where China's Li took gold and Serbia's Marija Micev silver - but she did break her arm in the quarter-finals.

In September 2019, Gjessing experienced another rare defeat in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic test event at Makuhari Messe, although this was in the heavyweight class and not her own weight division.

She suffered a 27-10 loss to Britain's 2017 world champion Amy Truesdale, but she remained buoyant about her Tokyo capabilities.

"Taekwondo has become a very big gift to me," she told World Taekwondo. "It will be a great challenge for me to advance to the Tokyo Paralympics."

Gjessing's life has been marked by professional as well as sporting success. Her legal qualifications have earned her a position as a state prosecutor in Denmark.

Reflecting upon her illness, she told World Taekwondo in 2014: "It was a big shock."

Gjessing had given up taekwondo by then, partly due to family and educational commitments and partly due to failing to qualify for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

But while rehabilitating from her operation in 2012 she saw something that inspired her.

"I saw the Paralympics in London a few months after my amputation, and I thought, 'how can I feel sorry for myself, when they can do all this?' she recalled.

So she contacted Johansen. After an eight-year lay-off, Gjessing got back into training. "Johansen had an elite taekwondo centre and his guys were on a high level," she said. "But I found I could still kick."

Just a month-and-a-half later, she entered the able-bodied Danish National Championships and won in her class. "That felt really good," she admitted. She started intensive training for the 2013 World Para Taekwondo Championships in Lausanne.

She was off on a golden pathway towards a historic success in Tokyo…

Hakizimana, a Burundian refugee living in the Mahama Refugee Camp in Rwanda, was one of six athletes named in the team in different sports.

Hakizimana is set to compete in the men's under-61-kilogram division when taekwondo makes its Paralympic debut.

Until a few months ago, Hakizimana was based in the Mahama Refugee Camp, the biggest in Rwanda with more than 50,000 refugees. 

More recently, he has been training in Rwandan capital Kigali.

At the camp, Hakizimana organised a taekwondo school and has trained in excess of 1,000 refugee children.

He has also prepared himself for elite competitions.

He competed in the 2017 African Open Championships in Kigali, where he won his first match before losing 18-12 to the top-seeded, three-time world champion Aythami Santana Santana of Spain in the under-61kg K44 quarter-finals.

As a refugee, it has been hard for Hakizimana to receive the necessary visas to travel to tournaments, making classification challenging, but World Taekwondo assured he would be reclassified before the August 1 deadline.

"We are thrilled with the announcement that Burundian refugee Parfait Hakizimana will be representing the Refugee Team at the Tokyo Paralympic Games this summer," said World Taekwondo President Chungwon Choue, who also chairs the THF Board.

"Few athletes have had to overcome the conditions of Mr. Hakizimana, who until recently lived, taught, and trained in Rwanda’s Mahama Refugee Camp."

While living in a camp for internally displaced people in 1996 because of the Burundian Civil War, he lost his mother and received an injury that left his left arm permanently debilitated when he was eight.

Fearing for his life, he later left the country permanently when unrest in Burundi flared up again in 2015.

Hakizimana has since been living at the Mahama Refugee Camp in Rwanda.

"Refugees don’t have a lot," he told the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website, "but sport helps them forget their troubles."

The Refugee Paralympic Team represents more than 82 million people worldwide that have been forced to flee war, persecution, and human rights abuses - 12 million of whom live with a disability.

Parfait joins a team of six refugees for the Paralympics that also includes Ibrahim Al Hussein, a Syrian refugee living in Greece, who is a swimmer; Alia Issa, a Syrian refugee living in Greece and club thrower; Abbas Karimi, an Afghan refugee living in the United States, who is another swimmer; Anas Al Khalifa, a Syrian refugee living in Germany and canoeist; and Shahrad Nasajpour an Iranian refugee living in the United States who will compete in the discus.

The Refugee Paralympic Team will compete under the IPC flag and will be the first team to enter the National Stadium during the Opening Ceremony.

In addition to her six world titles, Marchuk - who was abandoned in an ill-equipped orphanage in Kyiv after being born with Holt-Oram syndrome and only one arm - has won five European titles and many other international honours.

Ranked number one in the women's under-49 kilograms K43 division, Marchuk has not lost a fight since the introduction of the standings in 2016.

In 2019, she won all seven of her events, including adding a record-setting sixth world title and fifth European title.

She also set the record for most points scored and the biggest margin of victory, thanks to a 72-2 semi-final win at the 2019 European Championships.

Marchuk became the first athlete to receive the prestigious Merited Master of Sport in Para Taekwondo.

As a world champion, she was already a recipient of the Master of Sport designation, the system's second-highest award.

The Merited Master of Sport - the system's most prestigious award - is rarely bestowed and only on international champions that have also made valuable contributions to the sport. 

Marchuk is the first athlete in any post-Soviet country to receive the prize in Para-taekwondo.

Such commendation is a far cry from the reaction of the Ukrainian authorities after she had won her first world title in Aruba after her coach, Yuliya Volkova, raised the money for her to take part just nine months after she had taken up the sport.

Two months before the Championships Marchuk, who had already required a heart operation, needed surgery on her shoulder.

But when she got to Aruba she was an unstoppable force, whispering to herself during the Opening Ceremony: "I must win, I must win…"

She did so. "I had never seen Vika looking joyful," Volkova said. "Now, at last, I did. Sport - in this case, taekwondo - truly has the power to realise dreams and to change lives."

But when they returned home they were told that it was "a random gold medal" and no financial support was offered by the Sports Ministry. In the meantime, Marchuk required more treatment for her shoulder.

Eight years on, Marchuk is in a far happier place.

News of her award was followed by a promise from her local City Government to provide her with her own apartment.

But for all her successes, victory in Tokyo is far from being guaranteed.

Marchuk will be seeded third at the Paralympic Games, where K43 and K44 athletes are competing in the same class.

To earn that career-topping gold she will need to get by Mongolia's K44 world champion Enkhtuya Khurelbaatar and Turkey's second-seeded Meryem Betul Cavdar.

Ota, 31, who was born with a defect to her left hand, retired from Para-sking in April 2014, having been flagbearer for Japan at the Sochi Winter Games.

Four years earlier in Vancouver she had won silver in the 1 kilometre sprint classic standing event in women’s cross-country skiing, adding to the bronze she had won in the women’s 12.5km standing biathlon at the 2006 Winter Paralympics in Turin, where she had become the youngest Japanese Paralympian.

But Ota’s Paralympic journey was not over.

She first encountered Para-taekwondo at a promotion for Para sports, and then, at a taekwondo training event in 2015, she met Yoriko Okamoto, the Sydney 2000 Olympic bronze medallist.

That same year it was announced that Para-taekwondo would make its Paralympic debut in Tokyo at the Games scheduled for 2020 - and now due to take place this summer.

When she heard that there was no female Para-taekwondo player in Japan at that time, Ota decided to take up the sport, hoping to become a practice partner for new players aiming for the Tokyo Paralympics.

Though she participated in the Asian Para Taekwondo Championships in 2016 and won bronze her plan - to be a supporting player - did not change. In 2017, she did not compete.

But in January 2018 she had a change of heart and participated in the All-Japan Taekwondo Championships - winning gold.

In October that year Ota changed her job to one at SoftBank Corp, which allowed her to focus on her new sport.

Ota's hard training paid off when she won the Para title in the All-Japan Taekwondo Championships in February 2019.

This made her the only player designated as a national team member in women's Para-taekwondo.

At the 2019 World Para Taekwondo Championships in Antalya in Turkey, Ota won a bronze.

Now her eyes are set on Tokyo, and Para-taekwondo’s biggest-ever moment.

"I can finally play a game like taekwondo," she told World Taekwondo. "Will there be a medal?

"Now that I can practise well, I think it will follow if my strength improves… I think I should be able to get it."