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 Kiev 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."

Aged 36, he had won three world titles in the under-61 kilograms K43 division, two European titles and an International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation World Games championship.

"My goal in 2018 is to win every tournament I compete in," he told World Taekwondo. "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.

Forced to switch from boxing to Para-taekwondo after losing his hands in an accident with a home-made bomb at the age of 18, Kong turned to martial arts philosophy to help cope with the loss.

"Martial arts develops your self esteem," he said.

"It develops a respect for the world in you, a sense of community, and a feeling of empathy."

Having earned gold at the first Para Taekwondo World Championships, Kong is determined to win again as Para-taekwondo makes its Olympic debut in Tokyo.

"The one that wins is the best of the best," he said. "This achievement is my dream – to be the best in the world."

That towering ambition, of course, is now on hold to 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 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.

The video was the first of World Taekwondo's online "Kicking It At Home" campaign and included footage of Kong – who was born in Vietnam but came to France aged three – at home. 

Other notable Para-taekwondo athletes involved included Gamze Gurdal of Turkey, Peru's Angelica Espinoza, Lisa Gjessing of Denmark, Mexican Juan Diego Garcia Lopez, Veena Arora of India, Brazil's Nathan Torquato, Alejandro Vidal Alvarez of Spain and Italy's Antonio Bossolo.

When the lockdown halted competition, Kong could reflect on another highly successful season in 2019.

He made the podium at the one-day Tokyo 2020 test event in Chiba on September 28, fighting in the only men's competition, the K44 under-61kg category.

Bolorerdene Ganbat of Mongolia was the victor in the men's event, defeating Antonino Bossolo of Italy 16-12 in the final.

Kong completed the podium along with Mitsuya Tanaka of Japan, winning bronze.

On June 16, Kong won his 11th consecutive tournament in the men's under-61kg K43 class as he took another Pan Am Open title in Portland.

In his previous tournament, Kong had successfully defended his world title at the Championships held in Antalya, Turkey, in February – although he had been made to work hard in the final before beating Israel's Asaf Yasur 24-22.

Kong is a phenomenon – and Tokyo remains in his sights…