Kumho becomes official partner of GB Taekwondo team

The GB Taekwondo team has begun its final preparations for London 2012, and as the squad limbers up to kick its rivals into next week GB Taekwondo has announced a new partnership with Kumho Tyre UK, a company every bit as Korean as the sport its members practice.

“We are extremely excited to be involved with these fine athletes and very much look forward to assisting their endeavours at London 2012 and beyond,” said Kumho Tyre UK managing director Kie Myung Choe. “We are naturally very proud to have achieved this link with a sport that is so close to Korean hearts, and is now thought to have some 70 million exponents around the world. We are also deeply impressed by GB Taekwondo’s series of national initiatives that’s aimed at identifying talented young people and helping them to reach their full potential.”

Gary Hall, performance director at GB Taekwondo added: “We are delighted to agree a partnership with Kumho Tyres as we make our final preparations for the Games this summer. The backing of such a strong global brand will not only help us put the finishing touches to our 2012 planning, but support our aims for the wider development of the sport in the UK. We share a common goal in seeking maximum performance and there are some fantastic opportunities to achieve this with Kumho Tyres in both the short and long term.”

Taekwondo, which loosely translates to ‘the way of the hand and the foot’, first became an Olympic sport in 2000, and the UK is now regarded as one of the world’s top Taekwondo nations, with some 600 clubs supporting 100,000 practitioners. No less than 17 British athletes comprise the ‘World Class Performance Programme’. They are drawn from all over the country and are trained at the sport’s national headquarters in Manchester. The Olympic Taekwondo competition runs from 8 to 11 August.