How an SAS survival show helped GB’s taekwondo star overcome Tokyo 2020

Jade Jones isn’t used to losing at the Olympics.

Victory in the 57kg category at her home Olympics at London 2012 – the first taekwondo gold in her country’s history – was followed by a second win four years later in Rio.

So by the time she was ready to compete at Tokyo 2020, Jones had never tasted defeat at an Olympics.

But all that changed in dramatic fashion when she fell at the first hurdle in Japan, succumbing to the Refugee Team’s Kimia Alizadeh in a bout that left her “absolutely gutted.”

“I didn’t switch into attack mode, I stayed in scared mode,” she said of what she perceived as a passive performance at the Games. And when asked how she would deal with the defeat, the 2019 world champion expressed that she had no idea how she would react. The feelings were just so alien to her.

“I don’t know, I’ve never had to do it before,” she said simply. “I’ll let you know.”

READ MORE: Taekwondo World Championships preview

Finding catharsis in unexpected places

Since that unexpected defeat, Jones has let us know exactly how she felt in the days, weeks and months following those disappointing Games.

“I’ve never lost at the Olympics before, so it obviously broke me,” she told the BBC in an interview last month.

Last April she also revealed that the fears and worries brought on by the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK played a major role in her lack of preparation for the Games.

“I was struggling with a lot of anxiety in lockdown and had never really experienced that before,” she said.

“I was petrified to go near my family, thinking I was going to pass on this deadly thing – like everybody was. I was over-thinking everything. That’s where it started from.”

But catharsis has come in an unexpected form, as the 29-year-old entered the SAS: Who Dares Wins television show which aired over the last months in the UK. The series sees contestants pushed to their limits by subjecting them to Special Air Service training and scenarios, and Jones’ appearance on the show brought back some of the confidence she had knocked out of her during the Tokyo 2020 Games.

“I was in a bit of a weird place, so to go into that show, to test myself… you truly do find yourself, what you are, what you’re about, so it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“The closest thing to the Olympics that I could compare to”

While Jones’ foray into the SAS life may seem like a strange way to prepare for the vigours of this season, which include this week’s World Taekwondo Championships in Guadalajara, the pressures of the show that included lack of sleep, lack of food and being in a “constant state of adrenaline” left the athlete nicknamed ‘the headhunter’ with a familiar feeling.

“It’s the closest thing to the Olympics that I could compare to be honest. That constant adrenaline, the fear, having to throw yourself into it and then the buzz… but obviously, because the Olympics mean so much, it was different,”…