Taekwondo ace Aaron Cook switches allegiances to Isle of Man - Isle of Man Sport

Sponsored by

Taekwondo ace Aaron Cook switches allegiances to Isle of Man

Great Britain's Aaron Cook, right, aims a kick on his way to controversially beating Ramin Azizov of Azerbaijan in the final of the Men's -80kg competition during the European Taekwondo Championships. Cook will now represent the Isle of Man in future competition after being snubbed by GB selectors for the London Olympics (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Published on 07/12/2012 09:51

Former world number one and European champion makes moves after being snubbed for Olympic selection

FORMER world number one Taekwondo player Aaron Cook sensationally switched allegiances to the Isle of Man last night after being snubbed by Great Britain selectors for the London Olympics despite being reigning European -80kg champion.

The 21-year-old from Dorchester will now fight for the island at the World and European Championships plus all open competitions.

Fighting for the IoM, which is an associate member of the World Taekwondo Federation and therefore permitted to field its own team at WTF-sanctioned championships, means he can now compete at the highest level without surrendering his British nationality, leaving the door open for possible GB Olympic selection at Rio in 2016.

Cook, who has no previous links with the island told Sky Sports:’I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for me and will allow me to still compete for Great Britain at the Olympic Games, which I’ve wanted. Now we can look forward.’

On his switch of allegiances Cook added: “It was very hard for me to go back there after not selecting me. I felt there was nothing more I could have done to be selected for the Olympics. I was reigning European champion, reigning world number one. I’m never going to work with those people again. They’ve made their minds up with what they’ve done to me and I’ve made my mind up.’

Cook could now find himself fighting at international championships against Lutalo Muhammad, the athlete who was selected in his place for London.

Muhammad managed to win a bronze at the Games, despite his initial selection provoking an outcry as he was ranked only 56th in the world at the time.

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Sponsored by
Taekwondo ace Aaron Cook switches allegiances to Isle of Man

Top stories

Sport