This Subway worker has sights set on breaking a 24-year Australian Olympic medal drought (2024)

There isn’t a lot that Leon Sejranovic does not squeeze into his day. The 22-year-old Melburnian is midway through a sport and exercise science degree. Like many university students, he works part-time – at Subway. He also coaches taekwondo at the Maribyrnong Sports Academy and Notorious Martial Arts club.

That would fill a week for many. For Sejranovic, it does not even count the 10 sessions a week he has spent training for the Olympics at the National Performance Centre. “We do taekwondo five times a week, and then we do strength and conditioning four to five times a week,” he says. “I personally like to do that five times a week. Heading into the Olympics we also had a few extra sessions a week, doing some film and analysis and extra training.”

Australia’s national head coach, Lee Seok-Hun, says Sejranovic is as hardworking as the athletes in his native South Korea, who lead the all-time medal table with 22 Olympic medals (12 gold, three silver, seven bronze). The main difference Lee has noticed between the two countries’ approach to the sport is that athletes in Australia have to train while also maintaining a work life.

“When I started [with Australia] in 2022, I saw Leon had potential, but it was also his personality,” says Lee, who previously coached the Korean team to numerous grand prix titles and world championship medals. “Every time, whatever he is doing, he is training harder. Some [athletes] skip some things, but Leon is doing all, every time. That’s why now he’s high-ranking.”

It also goes some way to explaining how Sejranovic brought home bronze in the men’s −74 kg at last year’s world championships in Azerbaijan. It was Australia’s first medal at a world titles since Carmen Marton won gold in 2013, and has fuelled his mad extracurricular juggle in the lead-up to his debut Olympics.

In Paris, the drought is far longer. Nobody has stood on the podium in the 24 years since Lauren Burns and Daniel Trenton won gold and silver respectively at Sydney 2000. And the quest to make some rain will begin on Friday with a tough -80kg contest against Tunisian sixth seed Firas Katoussi.

But, as he points out, “pressure makes diamonds on the Olympics stage”. And the foundations across the team appear to be there.

In Tokyo three years ago, none of Australia’s four team members made it past the first round. It prompted a review, and then an overhaul of the national program that is already reaping rewards. Bailey Lewis (-58kg - starts on Wednesday), Australia’s other debutant, last year claimed two Grand Prix medals, and Stacey Hymer (-57kg - starts on Thursday) is in form.

“This is the best team that we’re sending to an Olympic Games for quite a long time,” said Hymer, who competed in Tokyo and says she has witnessed profound changes to the set-up.

“Our whole environment fully pivoted [after Tokyo] and there was a lot more highlighting the athlete voice … we became more professional, we had a change in coaches. Definitely this time around, it’s going to be absolutely phenomenal.”

Sejranovic first tried taekwondo as a three-year-old and in 2015 was accepted into Maribyrnong, where Beijing 2008 Olympian Ryan Carneli helped him transition to Olympic-style taekwondo. Over the next three years he won multiple national titles and then, aged 16, gold at the 2018 Oceania Championships.

Having not made the Tokyo team, he set his sights on Paris, and spent every waking moment between the study and Subway shifts and coaching sessions to refine the intricate elements of his sport: technique, strength and flexibility. His static flexibility is not good (“if you are to ask me to touch my toes right now, I’d probably, I’d struggle”) but his dynamic flexibility wields power through high kicks that suggest some serious hip mobility.

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All of this takes time and focus, and he credits his work ethic to his father, who migrated from the former Yugoslavia and with whom he lives. “I definitely think I’m a hard worker and that’s thanks to my dad,” he says. “He’s raised me to be independent and have a lot of good qualities. He cooks, does the washing, everything he can to make my life easier and allow me to just focus on working, training and studying. I wouldn’t be able to have my hands as many baskets and do as many things as I do without him.”

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