TEHRAN (FNA) -- She is a real Iranian fighter, fierce and focused on taking down an opponent. At 20 years old, taekwondo champion Sara Khoshjamal is taking her fight to Beijing. This summer she’ll travel from her home on the outskirts of Tehran to the heights of the Olympic stage.

“I worked very hard, I practiced very hard and my coach is very great. Now I go for the Olympic games. … I’m very happy,” she told ABC News.
Since making the Olympic qualifiers in Vietnam and beating the world’s top-ranking woman in her weight class last month, Khoshjamal has become a national celebrity. Keeping with what’s required in her Muslim society, Khoshjamal competes wearing a headscarf, but this has not laid any restrictions on her. She represents irrepressible talent and ambition.
“Sara is becoming a role model for young girls in Iran,” Kiarash Bahri of Iran’s TaeKwondo Federation told ABC News, standing near a larger-than-life poster bearing Khoshjamal’s image.
Khoshjamal is the first Iranian woman to earn a spot at the Olympics.
In the past three years other women have competed from the Islamic Republic in Olympic pistol-shooting, but Bahri said they were wild card entries. None of the women finished in the top three, making Khoshjamal Iran’s best hope for its first female medalist.
“I’m happy, but I am nervous. It is a very big duty. All of my country is watching me,” she said.
“I would love to take a gold medal in Beijing. I know it is important for other girls in Iran, but it’s important for me too. I practice very hard, and I hope we can do it. It will make the people of my country happy.”
Taekwondo is increasingly popular among women in Iran, with roughly 120,000 women practicing the martial art.
Arrangements have been made with international federations to allow Iranian women to attend competitions in Islamic code of dressing, and as a result, Iranian women are now able to compete internationally in rowing, rifling and chess.
Though intensely physical, taekwondo is viewed as being compatible with Islamic teachings.
“In taekwondo, they have a stress on spiritual things -- family, respect for elders, which is exactly the same as that in Islam,” says Bahri.
“In Islamic society, we have different beliefs, different ways of behaving. Taekwondo is not stopping that.”
Khoshjamal can raise her game by practicing at home with two older brothers, both of whom trained in taekwondo but had to stop when it became too expensive. While most parents try to keep their children from fighting, Khoshjamal’s parents stand by approvingly, as living room fights are just part of her training routine.
On the mat Sara Khoshjamal is a force, kicking her way to the top of her weight class.
Off the mat she is a petite, pretty brunette who reads psychology books and helps around the house.
Training since the age of 8, Khoshjamal put her university studies on hold to prepare for the Olympics, promising her schoolteacher mother she would resume her education down the line.
Practice takes six hours a day and ends with her studying videos of her past matches. She has traveled from Australia to Beirut for competitions, but has yet to visit the United States.
Khoshjamal’s parents, of modest means but teeming with moral support, can’t travel to Beijing this summer. They hope to watch their daughter’s matches over streaming Web video.
“I was worried about her safety when she first started tae kwon do,” said Khoshjamal’s father. “But my sons did tae kwon do, then my daughters did taekwondo … in the end there’s no difference.”
The growing ranks of women in taekwondo, fighting and kicking their way around the Islamic Republic, contradict traditional images stereotyped by western media of Iranian women.
“In Iran, our culture looks at women in a more feminine way. It may be hard for people to accept and, of course, there is some resistance,” said Bahri.
“But once they see that everything is done according to our culture and beliefs, that there are no men involved in the competition, that we take precautions as far as being a rough sport, they allow their daughters or sisters to take part.”
A few months from now those women on the mat and millions more across Iran will be looking up at Khoshjamal, watching her carry their dreams to Beijing.
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