Jade Jones

Why organisations work with Jade Jones

• She is the only athlete to have won Olympic taekwondo gold for Britain, and she did it twice, at 19 and at 23, against the world’s best Korean and Chinese fighters in their own sport.
• She speaks from a 13-year competitive career at the top of a sport with no margin for off-days, which gives weight when she talks about pressure, preparation, and the psychology of repeat performance.
• Her trajectory through Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 first-round exits, then a complete sport change to professional boxing at 31, gives her a credible vocabulary on setback and reinvention that most decorated athletes do not have.
• Awarded both an MBE and an OBE by the Crown for services to taekwondo and sport, recognition that signals public-record stature rather than bureau framing.

Biography highlights

• Olympic gold medallist, women’s 57 kg taekwondo: London 2012 and Rio 2016.
• World Champion, 57 kg, Manchester 2019. Three-time European Champion (2016, 2018, 2021). Two-time European Games champion (2015, 2023).
• Ten career gold medals across World Taekwondo Grand Prix events between 2014 and 2023.
• MBE (2013) and OBE (2020) for services to taekwondo and sport.
• Twice named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year (2012, 2016); Flint Pavilion Leisure Centre renamed in her honour.
• Professional boxing debut, 7 March 2026, Misfits Duel 2 in Derby; second-round knockout victory over Egypt Criss.

Biography

Team GB had never won an Olympic taekwondo medal of any colour when Jones walked into the ExCeL arena for the women’s 57 kg final at London 2012. She walked out at 19 as Team GB’s first taekwondo Olympic champion and the youngest member of that Games’ British gold cohort. Four years later in Rio, she defended the title against Spain’s Eva Calvo, beating her 16-7 to become the only British fighter ever to win two Olympic taekwondo golds.

The two-Games haul is the headline. The career underneath it is the substance. She won her first World Championship in Manchester in 2019 against the defending champion. She holds three European titles and two European Games titles. She collected ten World Grand Prix golds across nearly a decade of competition, the kind of record that requires a person to be peaking on demand at three or four major events a year for most of their twenties.

That record also includes the two losses that matter. First-round exits at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, after a year of training in her own garage during the pandemic and a second cycle as the marked favourite. The recovery vocabulary she uses on stage is not borrowed; it is what she did to keep competing after each of them.

In March 2025 she retired from taekwondo and signed with former professional boxer Stephen Smith to train for a boxing career. Her stated target is to become a world champion in two sports. She made her professional debut at Misfits Duel 2 in Derby on 7 March 2026 and won by second-round knockout. The point for a corporate audience is the willingness to start again from the bottom of a different sport at 31 after one of the most decorated careers in British combat sport.

Key speaking topics

• Performance under pressure at elite level
• Repeat peak performance across a long career
• Recovery and reinvention after public setback
• Mental health in high-stakes environments
• Long-term goal setting and focus
• Women in sport and underrepresented disciplines
• Career transition and starting again

Ideal for

• Sales, trading and leadership teams whose performance is measured event by event
• Senior leadership offsites focused on resilience, succession, and renewal after a hard year
• Company-wide kickoffs and recognition events looking for credible Olympic-calibre proof of what discipline produces
• Diversity, women’s networks and ERG events where a high-profile woman in a male-dominated combat sport adds substance

Audience outcomes

• A concrete sense of what daily discipline looks like over a decade of competitive peaks
• A working definition of pressure that comes from inside an Olympic final, not a metaphor
• Permission to treat setback as an operational fact rather than a personal failing
• A first-hand account of changing direction late, told by someone doing it now in public