Aaliyah Powell interview: Huddersfield's world championship taekwondo star faces battle with Jade Jones for Team GB Olympic spot

The young athlete from Huddersfield has only just turned 20 yet she has already accomplished more in three years as a full-time athlete than some manage in an entire career.

Powell won a bronze medal in the 54kg category at the taekwondo world championships in Manchester in 2019, her first senior major tournament, and then won a second bronze at the global gathering held in Mexico last week in the 62kg category.

In between times there was a serious injury, two knee surgeries and a huge decision to make about whether she focus on her education or follow her dream of becoming an Olympian.

“Both medals are equal to me but for different reasons,” Powell tells The Yorkshire Post.

“After my first worlds I had bad injuries and two knee surgeries, so this worlds was more of a comeback to world-class level and it’s confirmation that I am getting back up there.

“The worlds back in 2019 I was doing my GCSEs at the time, it was more of a shock than anything. Some people might have thought it was a fluke, so medalling again at consecutive worlds is a little bit of an ‘I told you so’.”

Even then the bronze was bittersweet - “as athletes that’s what you go into competitions aiming to win” - because it might take wins for her to achieve her dream of competing in an Olympics in Paris in two years’ time. For although she proved to be the third best in the world in the 62kg division in Mexico, that is not a recognised Olympic class.

To compete in Paris she will have to drop down to 57kg, the category at which Jade Jones is a two-time Olympic champion for Britain as well as a bronze medallist at that weight last week. Britain can only take one to the Games.

“Quite a lot of people say to me you’re in the same category as Jade it’s going to be tough, but we’ve still got a year left in the qualification process,” says Powell, who can still earn qualifying points at 62kg over the next 12 months, including at next summer’s world championships in Azerbaijan.

“Both of us want the same thing in Paris, to get gold, but only one person can go. I’ll aim for it and just try my best to be the one that goes.”

Everything she has done so far suggests the up-and-coming Powell will give the established Jones a run for her money.

When Jones was winning her first gold medal at London 2012, Powell had only just started taekwondo.

“I just wanted to do an Olympic sport,” she says. “My cousin and I would spend all our time together in the six-week holidays and she was going to a taster session in Huddersfield, I tagged along and watched, enjoyed it, and then the next week asked my mum if I could have a go.

“My instructor said after that first session if you carry on you’ll be world champion one day.

“I didn’t have the intention of doing it for that long, I wanted to do fencing originally but I was too young, so my plan was to do taekwondo for two years and then take up fencing - because I thought looked really cool - but I never quit taekwondo.

“To me taekwondo is a game, kicking people to score points and making sure they don’t kick you. People like other martial arts just because they can fight other people, for me it’s more about the tactical element of it.”

By the time she was 12, Powell stepped up her interest in taekwondo and moved to the Quest club in Penistone.

Her surprise world championship bronze medal at the age of 16 left her with a decision to make.

“I was a bit conflicted because I wanted to stay at home and go to college, but after the worlds I had an offer to be full-time and it felt like an opportunity I should take,” says Powell, who moved to Manchester to be with the Great Britain squad.

“Education has always been important to me so it was a bit of a struggle deciding which one I was going to do. You can always go back to education, but a career in sport is something you should take while you can.”

Achievements like those in Mexico suggest she made the right decision, but Powell is not one to look back. “I’m a very grounded person, I’m also hard on myself, I’m probably my biggest critic," she says. “I haven’t achieved the big goal yet so I’m focusing on that. It’s been said of me that I don’t celebrate those little wins so much, but at the end of the day it’s a journey and a process.”