“Making it to the Olympics feels like I’ve got through the fire and am now out the other side.”
Rebecca McGowan doesn’t mince her words when it comes to describing the battle she’s had to become an Olympian.
And while her description of her journey to Paris 2024 is dramatic, it’s not an overstatement.
Of all Team GB’s athletes, McGowan had one of the very hardest tasks when it came to being included.
Olympic taekwondo rules state only one athlete from each country can be entered in each weight category meaning McGowan was up against no less than a three-time world champion and double Olympic medallist in the shape of Englishwoman, Bianca Cook.
So the fact McGowan is on the verge of making her Olympic debut says much about both her talent and her determination.
It has, though, taken a monumental effort from the Scot.
“I look at my journey to get here and I’ve had to fight through more than anyone can imagine,” she says.
“I’ve had to really battle and a lot of people would have just given up so it makes me really proud to look on everything I’ve been through.
“Making the team for Paris felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders and I know that the Olympics isn’t going to be as difficult as the journey to get here.”
24-year-old McGowan from Dumbarton began taekwondo as a five-year-old in response to a childhood friend, with whom she had a love-hate relationship, doing taekwondo himself and so McGowan believed that if she began practicing it too, she’d be able to get one up on him.
Nobody, not even McGowan, could ever have imagined how that decision would change her life forever, though.
Having shown promise as a junior athlete, it was when McGowan was 16 and relocated to GB’s National Taekwondo Centre in Manchester that she really began to take things seriously.
World Junior bronze in 2016 highlighted her potential but it’s been in the past couple of years that the Scot has begun to excel.
Her first major championship title came in 2021 in the shape of European gold and that was followed up by two European bronzes as well as world bronze and silver.
It’s been quite a run of form for McGowan and has ensured the +67kgs fighter heads into Paris 2024 brimming with confidence which, in her opinion, is even more valuable than being in peak physical shape.
Indeed, her world championship silver medal last year came just weeks after breaking her ribs which suggests that McGowan is right to believe her mind will be a more valuable asset than her body on Olympic fight day.
“Everyone wants to be in the best physical shape they can but I don’t focus on that because after having so many injuries in the past, I know the main thing is that my brain is working,” she says.
“As long as I’m fully focused mentally, I know my body is going to follow. I’ve done everything I could to be in the best condition physically but really, my priority is making sure my mind is in the best place it’s ever been.”
Despite the fact that Paris 2024 will be McGowan’s Olympics debut, she has already had a taste of the Olympic experience.
At Tokyo 2020, the Scot was a travelling reserve, with the aforementioned Cook the athlete selected for GB.
Being forced to watch the Olympic action from the sidelines in Japan was, admits McGowan, not the easiest of situations but she used the experience as fuel and now believes that seeing the inner workings of the Olympic Games three years ago has set her up nicely for Paris.
“Being a reserve is tough because you’re so close but so far away,” she says.
In Tokyo, I’d done all the hard parts in terms of the training but I didn’t get the enjoyment of fighting in the Olympics so I told myself that I just wasn’t doing that again. I knew that next time, I was going to make sure that I had that final part of the experience of becoming an Olympian.
“Going to Tokyo set me up in terms of knowing what I’ll be in for in Paris so that was very helpful.”
McGowan’s recent results suggest she’s right to have lofty ambitions at Paris 2024.
The Scot knows she has what it takes to beat everyone in the world but she also knows that in a sport like taekwondo, where the line between winning and losing is incomprehensibly fine, so much has to go right on the day for McGowan to become Olympic champion.
“I go to every competition wanting nothing less than gold,” she says.
“But our sport is so volatile - one small thing can change the result entirely. There’s a lot of things that will be outwith my control in Paris and because of that, in taekwondo, anyone can win the Olympics. All I can do is make sure I leave with no regrets."
