When Mohammed Nour walked away from competitive Taekwondo at the end of 2024, he believed his time in the sport was over.
For years, his ambitions had been centred on one goal: representing Great Britain at the Olympic Games. He had been part of the GB Performance Squad from his teenage years, progressed into the full-time programme and competed at European and World Championships, the Grand Prix Series and on the international circuit, reaching the top 16 in the world rankings.
But when the Paris 2024 Olympic cycle ended without him making the team, Mo decided he had given everything he could and that it was time to close that chapter.
Less than two years later, he was standing at the National Championships again, but this time he was not preparing to compete. He was coaching a team of nine athletes from New Generation Taekwondo Club, the club he opened in January of this year, and watching two of his young athletes win bronze medals in the Novice divisions.
For Mo, the experience has given him a completely different perspective on a sport that has been at the centre of his life since childhood.
“It was just a nice feeling, because now I get to give back to the next generation,” he said. “It’s a very fulfilling job to see kids improving, getting more confident, just being themselves and expressing themselves. That’s the main thing about sport.”
Mo’s journey to this point began long before New Generation Taekwondo Club opened its doors.
He entered the GB development programme as a teenager, joining the development team at 15 before being offered the opportunity to move into the full-time programme at 17. He made a deliberate decision to study at Manchester University so he could pursue the opportunity to join the GB programme.
That decision paid off, and Mo joined the full-time team in December 2020, with the ultimate aim of stepping onto the mats at Paris 2024.
In the years that followed, he built an impressive competitive career, representing Great Britain at European and World Championships and competing in the Grand Prix Series, while reaching the top 16 in the world rankings, but a callup for the biggest show of them all remained elusive.
For someone who had been working towards the goal of performing at the Olympic Games since he was a child, missing out on Paris 2024 was difficult to process.
“That cycle was tough because I wanted to go to the Olympics and I didn’t make it, but I had a good journey,” Mo said.
“I just decided to stop there,” he said. “I just thought that my time was up. I told the coaches, ‘that’s it for me’ because my aim was the Paris Olympics.
“That’s all I really was looking at all my life. When it didn’t happen, I thought that’s it, it’s over. To be honest, I never had 2028 in my books.
“I’ve always loved Taekwondo. I’m like a Taekwondo nerd. I know everything about Taekwondo. I’ve always loved the sport, but I felt that I had no place in Taekwondo anymore, because I was so driven since a kid to go to the Olympics.”
His final competition came at the Dutch Open in 2024, where he won bronze, giving him a positive ending to a career he already knew he was leaving behind.
Mo had not planned to open a club so soon after retiring from competition, but his father encouraged him not to allow everything he had learned throughout his own journey to disappear.
“To be honest, I actually wasn’t planning to start my club this early,” Mo explained. “My dad told me I shouldn’t let all the hard work that I had done go to waste. He knows I’ll never compete in Taekwondo again, but I should open up a club while my knowledge is fresh.”
On 12 January 2026, New Generation Taekwondo Club officially opened.
Many of the children who walked through the doors had never done Taekwondo before, but Mo quickly realised that he had found something special in the group of young athletes who began training with him.
“I think I got lucky with the type of people that came through. They’re very talented.
“I’ve never seen kids that move like that before. Normally, a six-year-old, seven-year-old, they still don’t know where to put their feet properly. But these kids just picked it up straight away.”
Their first competition came in June, just five months after the club opened, and the young team returned with four gold medals. Those performances has left Mo eager for more, with plenty of progress happening week on week.
For Mo, those ambitions are exciting, but his priority is not simply producing champions. He wants to create an environment where children feel comfortable, confident and excited to come through the doors each week.
“The kids are loving it. That’s the main thing for me,” he said. “You just want to make sure the kids, when they come to your club, they feel at home.
“They feel like it’s a space where they can switch off. It’s a place to be excited to go to. Not a chore.
“It’s beyond taekwondo at this point. You want your club, the environment you create, to be like a family, to be like a place where everybody’s comfortable.
“Just to come and be themselves, and it is a safe space for them. I’m really happy to see that that’s the environment I’ve created over the last eight months.”
That environment was on full display at the National Championships.
With just nine months of club history behind them, Mo brought nine athletes to the same arena where he had previously experienced his own competitive successes. Two of them returned home with Novice bronze medals, while the wider team gained something Mo believes could prove even more valuable in the long term: experience.
“It was a bit hectic. I realised that next year I’ll probably need another coach,” he joked.
“When I opened the club at the start of this year, I didn’t plan to take anyone to Nationals. But my good friend convinced me that if the kids are talented and their parents are willing to push them and achieve great goals, put them in now.
“Let them experience it now. The first time will always be the hardest one for them. The first time is always the icebreaker, the big venue, multiple people, the screens, everything.
“It’s all overwhelming. But they’ve been through it now. And it’s a good life lesson for them as well.”
The performances themselves gave Mo plenty to be encouraged by, particularly given that his athletes had only been training for around eight months. But the moments that stayed with him were not necessarily the ones that happened inside the competition area.
“It was just nice to see the kids just having fun. In between their matches, during their matches, after their matches, they were all playing around in a warm-up area, going crazy.
“It was nice to see the team bonding as well.”
Mo’s own experience as an elite athlete has given him a unique perspective on what young competitors need, but his motivation now comes from seeing those lessons take root in somebody else.
“Results, they don’t mean much at the end of the day. They’re just numbers and statistics in the books,” Mo said.
“But what the main thing is, is you change a kid’s life for the better. You make them more confident and make them a better person, and just see them succeed, whether it’s in sport or other parts of life.
“That’s the main thing about sport for me, and sport helped me as well. It just gives you qualities that other things don’t.
“I would also like to thank all the parents at New Generation Taekwondo Club for their continued support, trust and encouragement. Their commitment to bringing their children to training, supporting them through competitions and believing in what we are building as a club means so much to me.
“None of this would be possible without them, and I am incredibly grateful to have such supportive families behind us as we continue to grow and help the next generation develop both on and off the mats.”
Standing in the same arena where he once competed as a National Champion, Mo found himself watching a new generation take its first steps.
The Olympic dream that once defined his relationship with Taekwondo may not have ended in the way he hoped, but his journey in the sport has found a new direction. The knowledge, experience and passion that he once carried onto the mat are now being passed on to children who are only beginning to discover what Taekwondo could mean for them.
Just nine months after opening New Generation Taekwondo Club, Mo is already watching his students begin to dream about where the sport could take them.
This time, he gets to help them chase those dreams.
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