HAD Jordyn Smith not been born with ginger hair, her entire life could well have panned out completely differently. When Smith was just the tender age of four, her dad, who predicted that her hair colour could, potentially, make her a prime target for bullies decided to take some pre-emptive action.

A taekwondo club along from the family home seemed like the perfect place to start, although Smith recalls that it wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings.

“When I was four, I was really into dancing but I wasn’t very confident so my dad took me along to a taekwondo club,” she said. “He took me there for a couple for reasons – firstly to build my confidence but also, because of my ginger hair, he thought doing taekwondo would maybe prevent me getting bullied or picked on at school. it worked – I definitely don’t get picked on.”

To say that Smith has never looked back would be an understatement. Now 16 years old, the teenager is one of the most promising taekwondo players in Britain and goes into the European Junior Championships, which begin in Larnaca in Cyprus in less than two weeks time, in a position to really make her presence felt.

The teenager from Falkirk is no stranger to winning medals at major championships; two years ago as a cadet, Smith became European Champion before claiming World Championship bronze just a few months later. And having ended 2016 inside the world’s top 16 in her first year in the junior category, she admits to being in confident mood going into the upcoming European Junior Championships. “I’m feeling really good about the Europeans,” she said. “This is my sixth major competition so I feel like I’m gaining in experience all the time.”

Smith, who is a pupil at Larbert High School, splits her time between her home north of the border and Manchester, where the British Taekwondo training base is and where she would ultimately like to relocate and become a full-time athlete. The thought of two training sessions a day would be daunting for most teenagers but it is something that Smith has been undertaking for a number of years, despite having to fit a full day of school in between. “My dad built me a gym in my back garden for my twelfth birthday and so I get up at 6am every day and train for an hour before I go to school,” she said. “Then I do a session in the evening, after I’ve finished my homework. So if I so turn full-time at the GB academy, I don’t feel it would be a shock to me because I’ve been training twice a day, six days a week since I was in primary 7.”

Smith is in no doubt as to what her long-time goal is; to become Olympic champion. It is, of course, a long path to reach such a point but with less than three years until the 2020 Olympics, Smith has her sights set on making her Olympic debut in Tokyo. “Ever since I have taken taekwondo seriously, 2020 has been my goal,” she said. “That’s what pushes me on - everyone has bad days at training so when I do, I remind myself of what I’m training for and that gets me through it. I’ll only be 19 in 2020 so while Tokyo could be just the start of things, I’ll hopefully have opportunities to go to the Olympics after 2020 as well. It’s so exciting to think what I’ve got ahead of me.”