The Yorkshire athlete battled on-the-mat adversity to become Great Britain's first-ever Olympic taekwondo medallist in 2008, and personal tragedy to claim her second world crown three years later.

In a discipline stacked with emerging young stars, it is testament to Stevenson's extraordinary will to win that she remained at the peak of her sport for almost 15 years.

Her proudest achievement came in 2011 when, with both her parents back home suffering from terminal illnesses, she won the world title in Gyeongju, South Korea.

"I was so close to not coming because I didn't want to leave my parents alone," said Stevenson after her victory. "But my family came together to help and I went out there to win it for them."

Stevenson had been tipped for stardom when she was still a teenager, winning the world junior title at the age of 15 and entering the senior ranks at a time when taekwondo was just being accepted into the Olympic programme.

She made her Olympic debut at Sydney in 2000, at the age of only 17, where she lost a bronze-medal match, and the following year she went to Jeju in South Korea, where she beat Chinese world number one Chen Zhong to add a senior world crown to her collection.

Although Stevenson was disappointed by a first-round defeat in her second Olympics at Athens in 2004, when the Beijing 2008 came around she was strongly favoured for gold, with only home hopeful and old foe Zhong seemingly standing in her way

The pair met in the quarter-finals, with Zhong apparently progressing with a tight 1-0 win, although video replays clearly showed Stevenson connecting with a two-point head-kick five seconds from the end.

After a furious team protest, the judges reversed the result in Stevenson's favour, but the Briton, ill prepared and roundly booed by the home crowd, was beaten in her next bout by Mexico's Maria Espinoza and had to settle for bronze.

It is a mark of Stevenson's incredible drive and ambition that while those around her celebrated her piece of sporting history, she headed home from Beijing in the firm belief that the gold medal had been hers for the taking.

Restarting her training programme back home in Manchester with renewed vigour, it seemed that nothing could get in the way of her path towards Gyeongju and onwards to home Olympic glory at London 2012, until she was given the devastating news about her parents.

In the months that followed her world title win, both Stevenson's parents passed away. In training, she was struck down by a cruciate ligament injury. Yet still she battled on. She had the honour of being selected to read the Olympic Oath on behalf of the athletes at the Opening Ceremony. 

But, her injury-truncated build up to the Games led to an early elimination.

In 2013, Stevenson announced her retirement from competition, and her intention to take up a coaching role in the Great Britain team. Shortly afterwards, World Taekwondo President Chungwon Choue announced that she been appointed to the world governing body's Executive Council.