Medal record | ||
---|---|---|
Men's taekwondo | ||
Representing Belgium | ||
European Championships | ||
2016 Montreux | -54 kg |
Mourad Laachraoui (born 31 March 1995) is a Belgian taekwondo practitioner. He won a gold medal at the 2016 European Taekwondo Championships.
Laachraoui won bronze medals at the Dutch and Belgian Open events in 2013. [1]
In 2015 Laachraoui won a silver medal in the finweight class at the Summer Universiade games after losing to Iran's Armin Hadipour Seighalani in the final. [1] [2] He finished fifth in the men's finweight at the 2015 World Taekwondo Championships. [2] He also won gold medals at the Israel, Fujairah and Alexandria Open tournaments and bronze medals at the Bosnia, Luxor and Swiss Opens. [1]
He won a gold medal in the 2016 European Taekwondo Championships held in Montreux, Switzerland. In the final of the −54 kg division he defeated 18-year-old Spanish fighter Jesús Tortosa 6–3 to win the tournament. [3] After his victory the Flemish taekwondo federation dubbed him "Europe's king of the lightweights". [4]
Laachraoui may be selected to compete at the 2016 Summer Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [5] but he wasn't.[ citation needed ] The quota place for Belgian team in the men's 58 kg was originally earned by Si Mohamed Ketbi via his world ranking position. However, Ketbi has struggled to maintain his weight and was unable to compete at the European Championships. [6] [7] The Belgian Taewkondo Federation is yet to decide between the three candidates that met the standard of being in the top 20 of the global Olympic 58 kg rankings; Laachraoui, ranked 15th, Ketbi, ranked 6th, and Salaheddine Bensaleh, ranked 18, are all eligible [8] but Ketbi went in the end. [ citation needed ]
Laachraoui was born on 31 March 1995. [2] His brother Najim Laachraoui was a terrorist confirmed to be one of the two suicide bombers at the Brussels Airport in the 2016 Brussels bombings. [9] At a press conference following the bombings Mourad Laachraoui said that he was "scared and saddened" by what his brother had done and that "you don't choose your family." [3] He did not have contact with his brother for years before the attack.
Gergely Salim is a Hungarian-Danish taekwondo practitioner, but lives now in Los Angeles as an American citizen.
Belén Asensio is a female taekwondo practitioner from Spain.
Park Hyo-Ji is a South Korean female taekwondo practitioner.
Bat-El Gatterer is an Israeli Olympic taekwondo athlete. She was the women's 2010 European featherweight champion.
Kim So-hui is a South Korean taekwondo practitioner. In 2016, she was ranked 10th by the World Taekwondo Federation.
Belgium competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. Since the nation's official debut in 1900, Belgian athletes had appeared in every edition of the Summer Olympic Games, with the exception of the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis. The Belgian team consisted of 108 athletes, 70 men and 38 women, across nineteen sports.
Kim Tae-hun is a South Korean taekwondo practitioner.
Seyfula Seferovich Magomedov is a Russian taekwondo practitioner, who competed in the men's flyweight category, the first ever four-time European Taekwondo Champion. Emerging as Russia's most decorated taekwondo player of all time, Magomedov accrued a set of twenty-one medals in his sporting career, including four European men's flyweight titles, three bronzes from the World Championships, and a single gold from the 2005 Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey. Magomedov was also selected to compete for the Russian taekwondo team at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he finished only in the opening round of the men's 58-kg division.
Jesús Tortosa Cabrera is a Spanish taekwondo athlete.
Mohamed Abrini is a Belgian Islamic terrorist. On 29 June 2022 he was convicted of involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks and received a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years. In July 2023 he was convicted of terrorist-related murder and attempted murder for his role in the 2016 Brussels bombings, and given a sentence of 30 years.
Najm al-'Ashrāwī, also known as Abū Idrīs al-Baljīkī or Soufiane Kayal, was a Belgian-Moroccan terrorist and Islamic State militant who was one of two suicide bombers at Brussels Airport in the 2016 Brussels bombings. The Islamic State confirmed that he was responsible for making all the explosives used in the November 2015 Paris attacks.
Si Mohamed Ketbi is a Belgian taekwondo athlete.
Ahmad Abughaush is a Jordanian taekwondo athlete. He won the gold medal in the 68 kg category at the 2016 Olympics. This was Jordan's first Olympic medal in any sport, excluding a bronze in 1988 when taekwondo was a demonstration sport.
Vito Dell'Aquila is an Italian taekwondo athlete. He won a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics. He also won the gold medal in the men's flyweight event at the 2022 World Taekwondo Championships held in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Adrián Vicente Yunta is a Spanish taekwondo athlete. He won the gold medal at the 2018 European Taekwondo Championships on the men's finweight category.
Pauline Louise Lopez is a Filipino taekwondo practitioner. She is a two-time gold medalist at the Southeast Asian Games and a bronze medalist at the Asian Games.
Kyriaki Kouttouki is a Cypriot taekwondo practitioner. She won the silver medal in the women's 46 kg event at the 2017 Summer Universiade held in Taipei, Taiwan.
Kurt Bryan Dela Vega Barbosa is a Filipino taekwondo athlete who competed in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Sarah Chaâri is a Belgian taekwondo practitioner from Belgium. She won the bronze medal at the 2024 Summer Olympic and gold medal in the women's lightweight event at the 2022 World Taekwondo Championships in Guadalajara, Mexico and became Belgium's first female World Taekwondo champion. In doing so, Chaâri also became the first-ever Taekwondo fighter to win golds at both Junior and Senior World Championships in the same year. Chaâri, who moved up to the senior division in 2022, had previously won gold in the 2022 World Taekwondo Junior Championships in Sofia in August.
Park Tae-joon is a South Korean taekwondo athlete. He won a gold medal in his World Taekwondo Championships debut in the 2023 World Taekwondo Championships held in Baku, Azerbaijan.