IF you're good enough, you're old enough.

The idiom could not be more apt than when you apply it to Asia Bailey, who at the age of 16 is already one of British taekwondo's brightest prospects.

The Falkirk girl already has a European senior bronze medal to her name - she won it in Azerbaijan in May - but she has her sights set far higher than this. Bailey will compete in the Commonwealth Championships in Edinburgh this weekend - it is the first time that the event has been held in Scotland - but it is the Rio Olympics on which the teenager is primarily focused.

For most 16-year-olds, notions of an Olympic place would be a shade optimistic. Not for Bailey, though. The precocious teenager became Scotland's first world junior medallist in 2012 when she won bronze and she has made the notoriously tricky step up to senior level remarkably easily, having joined the GB squad one year ago.

Bailey's admission to the heralded British squad requires her to train in Manchester but the opportunity to practice alongside such luminaries as Jade Jones, the 2012 Olympic champion, was something that she could not refuse. "It's really competitive within the squad," she says. "There's four of us in each weight category so it means we keep pushing each other.

"Being in the team has made me even more motivated to succeed than I was before. I've changed personally too: I've grown up a lot in the past 12 months and I've had to become much more independent because I'm living away from home."

Recent years have been far from plain sailing for Bailey, however. She ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament in April last year while competing in Belgium. It is an injury which can, potentially, be career-threatening and can wreak havoc with even the most experienced and strong-minded of athletes, never mind one so young. Bailey admits that, in the immediate aftermath, she was racked with self-doubt.

"Straight after injuring my ACL, I was distraught, I couldn't speak to anyone; I was so upset," she recalls. "There were so many negative thoughts running through my head and I did think that I might never be able to fight again. Especially when I was on crutches and I couldn't walk; I couldn't see how I'd ever be able to kick again."

Bailey had the best possible mentor to nurse her through her rehabilitation, though. Sarah Stevenson is a double world champion and Olympic medallist and, having retired in the aftermath of London 2012, the Englishwoman joined the coaching staff of GB Taekwondo. Her athletic prowess was, of course, impressive to Bailey but it was the fact that Stevenson had ruptured her ACL twice and returned to the sport both times, which was to become most valuable to the young Scot.

"She was preparing me for how hard it would be to get back and how tough my rehab was going to be, as well as explaining how she managed to cope with it herself," said Bailey. "If Sarah hadn't been there, I honestly don't know if I would have been able to get back.

"I'd see the others in the squad doing taekwondo training and all I could do was control work. Sarah's advice got me into the right mindset. It's difficult to put into words just how hard it was, but I got there; I got through it."

Since Bailey regained her fitness, her rise has been remarkable. Her European bronze medal, the first to be have been won by a Scot, is the highlight of her career to date but she must continue her swift progress if she is to become a member of Team GB for Rio 2016. To secure automatic qualification for the Games, she must be ranked inside the world's top six, a task which she admits is gargantuan.

"It would be amazing just to qualify for Rio, especially since it's so much harder to qualify for this Olympics than it was for London.

"Two years ago, GB had host nation spots," she explained. "I'm definitely still targeting Rio but I think Tokyo [in 2020] is really where I'd be aiming to peak."

Bailey knows that her biggest scope for improvement is the experience she can gain in the coming years. She is fighting against women a decade her elder and their nous cannot be fast-tracked.

Edinburgh's Commonwealth Championship will be only her third senior event of the season and she cannot wait to get started.

"I'm hoping to medal - that would be amazing - but I just want to enjoy it," she says. "Most of my teammates are English, there's only three Scots in the squad, so we're really proud to have this event in Scotland. It will be a great competition and I'm just so excited to be fighting at home."

The Commonwealth Taekwondo Championships will be staged in Meadowbank Stadium, Edinburgh, today and tomorrow.

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