British Taekwondo welcomes two new team members to the Sport Referee Department.

Clare Laybourne and Jo Leach-Flanagan are joining the Sport Referee Department after a thorough recruitment process. Clare and Jo join Paul Timms, Jodie Sinden & Sheryl Sinden in the refreshed technical official arm of our combat sport.

Together, they will reshape the strategy to grow the pool of talented referees and judges, as well as providing new ideas and opportunities for people new to refereeing to get involved.

Clare joins the department as Education Manager and has been involved in Taekwondo for over 30 years as an athlete, an instructor and in 2010 first qualified as Class 3 then progressed through to International Referee in 2018.

Clare has been a familiar face as an elite referee representing Great Britain for the last four years and can be seen refereeing all over the world including G1,G2,G4’s including World Taekwondo Grand Prix.

Clare also holds the honour of being Great Britain’s first Paralympic referee – having been selected for Tokyo 2020.

Jo joins the department as Administration & Finance Manager and like Clare started her referee career in 2010, qualifying as an International Referee in 2018.

Jo got into refereeing as a very proud parent of two former fighters, and wanted to give back to the sport that gave her children so much.

This has led to refereeing all over the world at various international events including the 1st Small State Championships, Senior Europeans and the 13th South Asian Games in Nepal where she fulfilled a lifelong ambition of seeing Mount Everest in person.

Jo was also invited to attend the Paralympic selection camp in 2019 for Tokyo 2020.

Our Sport Referee Department, like all of the technical departments within British Taekwondo, is run by passionate volunteers with huge amounts of knowledge and experience and we thank them all for their dedication and service to our members.

You can find out more about our Technical Departments here.