Former Miss Lesotho eyes country’s first ever Olympic medal

“I’m a very soft person. I’m very shy. But when I get in the ring, it’s like beast mode,” said Tau in an interview with Olympics.com. “I switch when I go into taekwondo. And then when I come out of it, I’m soft again. I feel like we have a lot of personalities, we are different beings, and we just need to explore who we are.”

At the 2024 African Qualifying event in Dakar, Tau won a silver medal in the flyweight category (under 49kg), thereby securing a ticket to Paris. She is confident she can become the first athlete from the Mosotho ethnic group to win an Olympic medal. “It’s something that’s never done, but I’m challenging myself to do this, and I’m dedicated, and I’m determined to do my best,” she said.

Michelle Tau (L) and her coach Hugo Tortosa Cabrera celebrate her qualifying for the Paris Olympics in February 2024. Photo by Instagram/Hugo Tortosa Cabrera

Tau comes from a family with a taekwondo tradition and grew up with the sport. Her father, John Molise Tau, a national taekwondo legend, passed away when Tau was still young, but she has always had great admiration for her father’s medals.

“My mum was in the national team along with my dad,” she told Olympics.com from her training base in Alcobendas outside the Spanish capital Madrid, before heading to Paris. “My dad, he’s like a hero in the country because he’s been to the African Games championships. He has a World Military Games medal.”

Tau wants to follow in her parents’ footsteps by pursuing taekwondo – a combat sport completely opposite to her other passion, modeling. Tau became the Face of Lesotho and represented her country at the Face of Beauty International competition in 2017 in New Delhi, India.

“The fact that I was into modelling and then into taekwondo, it was confusing for a lot of people,” said the 1997-born athlete. “Back then, as a girl going into taekwondo, a lot of people would just be like, ‘this is not a girl’s sport. This is like for boys’. They say to me, ‘When you are in modelling you have makeup, your hair is done, you are in heels, you are walking, you look soft, very soft, very poised, very composed’. Then here I am, they see me also in taekwondo, they are like, ‘you fight, you are strong, how do you balance the two?’”

Tau’s response was that wowen can be very strong. “When I get in the ring, I’m a different person… Women can also do tough things, and women can also fight.”

A well-rounded woman, Tau has shown extraordinary athletic ability early on, dominating local and regional taekwondo competitions in the women’s under 49kg category. However, she has never won a gold medal in international competitions.

The Lesotho athlete has won two silver medals in the under 46kg category at the 2019 African Games in Rabat, Morocco and three bronze medals at the 2023 African Games in Accra, Ghana. She also won six bronze medals over two appearances at the African Taekwondo Championships in 2021 and 2023.

“I was winning, so I used to think, ‘Oh, I’m at my peak level’. And then I went international,” she said with a bewildered look in her eyes. “Then I realized I am far behind… Internationally, it was like really hard.”

“She was already a conditioned athlete,” said coach Hugo Tortosa, who started working with Tau in 2023. “The problem was that she didn’t have a coach or have a good place to train, she was moving to different places to train.”

Tau added, “For the first time I was with a coach, I was in a stable, training environment, and he made it easier.”

Tortosa, born in Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain, also comes from a taekwondo family. His father, Jesus Tortosa Alameda, is a taekwondo master who won a world silver medal, and his brother Jesus Cabrera Tortosa is an Olympian and world youth champion.

Lesotho’s highlands have produced many excellent long-distance runners, who make up the majority of the country’s Olympic athletes. Tau will become one of four Basotho taekwondo athletes competing at the Olympics and the third female athlete to qualify, all in the flyweight category.

Likeleli Alinah Thamae was the first to qualify for Sydney 2000. But since Lineo Mochesane at Athens 2004, no female taekwondo athlete from this Southern African country has competed in the Olympics until Tau qualified for Paris this year.

In Paris, Lesotho – a country that has never won an Olympic medal – will be represented by three athletes. “This makes me feel very special,” Tau proudly said. “The fact that I’m one of the few that will be at the Olympics for my country, because we have never had, like 10 people going to the Olympics or qualifying for the Olympics in my country. It’s always, just like one person, two people. And it has been mostly in athletics.”

This achievement comes from Tau’s determination to continue the path outlined by her parents and coach. “One of the things that motivates me a lot, is when people reach out to me, to tell me how much I’ve changed their lives, how much they look up to me,” said the 27-year-old. “That is why I want to be the first to actually bring a medal to my country.”