Elgin's Damon Sansum won Scotland's first ever medal at a senior World Taekwondo Championships when he took Under-80kg silver at the Traktor Arena in Chelyabinsk, Russia, last night.
In the final event of the championships, Sansum - who had narrowly beaten world number one and former Great Britain team-mate Aaron Cook in the semi-final - lost 16-3 to Iran's Mahdi Khodabakhshi in a one-sided final of the blue riband event of the championships.
It was a disappointing end to the day for the former Forres Academy pupil, now based in Manchester, as he was no match for the speed and power of his opponent.
Sansum, 28, trailed 7-1 after the first round and his opponent stretched to 13-3 at the end of the second round before delivering the final winning head-kick at the start of the final round. It gave Iran their third gold medal of the championships.
Sansum, the US Open, Dutch Open and Commonwealth champion, won significant ranking points towards next year's Olympic Games, where he is hoping to strike gold.
Sansum beat Cook, his close friend, 14-13 on golden point in a tense semi-final.
Cook, left out of the GB team for the last Olympics when he was world number one, has since switched to Moldova and was competing for his country for the first time at the
championships.
Sansum, who lost to Cook at last year's European Championships, led 4-2 after the first round and 8-7 after the second round before a head-kick took him to 12-8. But Cook showed his experience to take it to the gold point when he landed a punch with just nine seconds of normal time to take
it to 13-13.
Sansum won it with a kick to the body much to Cook's frustration.
The pair could have been competing for the one available Under-80kg place in the British team for Rio but Sansum refuses to get drawn into the controversy over Cook's switch to Moldova.
"There was a lot in the media about Aaron going to a different country and people will think it's maybe a big relief for me but in the past year to 18 months I've performed best in that category," the Scot said earlier this month.
"It's not internal competition, it's about competing against loads of people in the world who are really good. I just have to concentrate on myself.
"I'm good friends with Aaron and I have nothing against him and he can do what he wants to do.
"He's going down the route that he wants to go down and, to be honest, he's guaranteed a place for the Olympics.
"If I went to say a country like South Africa and they told me I'd be guaranteed an Olympic place, then I couldn't think of a better feeling.
"But I want to stay here with the GB team and go through their selection policy and try and make sure I'm ahead of everyone else.
"It's the harder route but personally if I can get on the podium in Rio and walk out with the British flag behind me, then nothing could beat that feeling."
Sansum had won through four rounds yesterday to get to the semi-finals, beating Norway's Richard Ordemann 16-12 and then
Australian Hayder Shkara 13-10 to book his place in the quarter-finals where he beat Wei-Ting Liu (Taipei) 12-10.
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