Hall wants swift end to Cook saga

Aaron Cook
1 June 2012

GB Taekwondo performance director Gary Hall is looking for a swift resolution to the Aaron Cook controversy after the body announced it would not appeal against the British Olympic Association's request to reconsider its selection for London 2012.

Cook - winner of a second successive European title last month and top of the world rankings list - had been anticipated to secure a nomination for the under-80kgs category in GB's four-strong team for London, but was named as a reserve, overlooked in favour of Lutalo Muhammad, who would have to drop a weight division for the Olympics.

That prompted Cook to make an internal appeal to Sports Resolution Ltd and after it returned the same outcome, the 21-year-old wrote to the BOA, who on Thursday informed GB Taekwondo they had chosen not to ratify Muhammad's nomination.

On Friday, GB Taekwondo released a statement in which they confirmed they would not appeal and through ongoing dialogue with the BOA, would now seek "a solution as to how we resolve this situation".

It is a matter Hall wants to see resolved as soon as possible, but he has been keen to stress that GB Taekwondo had, as far as he was concerned, followed selection protocol "to the letter" - and that the body was not entirely comfortable with all the BOA's recommendations as to how things should proceed from here.

Hall told Press Association Sport: "We are getting to a point where we will keep reconvening and people will keep challenging to get the right decision.

"At the end of the day, this decision has to come down to professionals that sit on that panel.

"They have been very successful with their decision-making process up to now and have taken us to being one of the top teams in the world.

"The BOA have said there are some recommendations they would want to include in the next selection panel meeting and we are not in full agreement on some of those areas at the moment. It is going to be ongoing, but it is in everybody's interests to get this concluded as quickly as possible."

In his own statement earlier this week, Cook had indicated his feeling that his decision to quit GB Taekwondo's World Class Performance Programme last year and train independently had counted against him when it came to selection, but quizzed on that today Hall insisted: "It has absolutely had nothing to do with that."

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